Auto Mode will be the default in Claude Code – because humans can't be trusted

▲ Auto Mode will be the default in Claude Code – because humans can't be trusted(thenewstack.io)

19 points by maxloh a day ago | 7 comments

▲ overflowy 19 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Auto mode works really well with Safehouse [1]. I usually call Claude like this:

    safe() {
        safehouse --env --add-dirs="/tmp:~/.claude" "$@"
    }

    safeclaude() {
        safe claude --enable-auto-mode --permission-mode auto
    }

This way I will never fear Claude `rm -rf`-ing my home directory.

[1] https://agent-safehouse.dev/

▲ pseufaux 21 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I still don't see the appeal of Auto Mode. If I don't trust the model to run arbitrary commands, how much additional trust can be gained by an additional non-deterministic system. The point is that there are some failure modes which are completely unacceptable. Auto Mode lowers that risk but doesn't remove it. An unacceptable failure is still possible.

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kingstnap 18 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The appeal of auto mode is obvious.

Non yolo mode where you manually approve each command is literally pure security theatre. No human on earth has the patience to discerne the huge stream of commands agents run.

So even if false negatives are technically zero, having 100% false positives is not acceptable.

So a fundamental premise is you have to have filtration. Where only very few things are surfaced for humans to look

The first option which a decent number of harnesses do is being able to setup an auto approve list. Like `ls` is fine, `cat` is fine etc.

Now maintaining this list is in and of itself a giantic pita. But the real issue is that it still has way too many false positives. Fundamentally it comes down to the halting problem where you can't really include important things like `bash python <<PY` and what not which agents like to use. But regex can't solve the halting problem to figure out if the Python is safe.

So naturally the next best option is to use an LLM. Which isn't that stupid because even if its non deterministic at least it can dramatically reduce the false positives from the regex auto approve list.

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jeffyaw 20 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

once you have built up a trust in a model/harness/setup/workflow and you’ve been hitting enter for months straight then Auto Mode is appealing.

i found initially it would hang on some commands (moreso on subagents and moreso when first rolled out) and then roll past the hung command sometimes forgetting about it entirely. which wasn’t cool.

but after dialing in subagent permissions and probably some updates from anthropic Auto Mode is great. i still don’t always do it. but after reading this article just switched my current 12 panes to Auto.

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▲ shken 19 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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▲ pop3zxcv a day ago | parent | prev [-]

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