permission-modes

2 questions

AI

What's the difference between default, acceptEdits, plan, auto, dontAsk, and bypassPermissions?

Six permission modes, picked by how much you trust the tool call to be reversible. default prompts everything new; acceptEdits skips Edit prompts; plan blocks edits entirely; auto adds a classifier; dontAsk auto-denies anything not pre-approved; bypassPermissions skips every prompt (with a circuit-breaker for rm -rf against critical paths).
AI

What does Claude Code's plan mode actually produce on a real refactor?

A captured `claude --print --permission-mode plan` session that asked Claude to add a retry mechanism with exponential backoff and a dead-letter queue to the demo's notifications service. Plan mode redirects Claude to read, explore, and write a plan to `~/.claude/plans/`, with no project edits. The output was a 196-line specification with a decision table, state machine, file list, 23 enumerated test cases, and a backwards-compatibility note. The article shows what plan mode produces, what it skips, and when the plan beats the implementation as the deliverable.