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Auto mode is now the default in Claude Code

claude.com

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Re: Auto mode is now the default in Claude Code

#211

Post by user43928 »

jason1cho wrote: post #141
Certhas wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am using many many many things that I don't understand. Cars, public transport, etc... I review and test the end product, not every tiny step along the way. If the LLM uses some command line tools I have never heard of to create a model I can verify, why should I learn a tool that is completely irrelevant to my core expertise?

Many many people care more than the end product, for example whether a shirt is made of cotton with the forced labor, carbon emissions of public transport, etc. In terms of engineering software, you care the cost. An intelligent agent may try to read unnecessary files and it's time to stop it to save tokens and avoid polluting the context.

I doubt that it is more efficient for someone to routinely watch every line of output or stop to review terminal commands, rather than waiting for the turn to complete.

It is a broader debate about agentic AI, and whether one should relinquish control to the tool rather than aim for full understanding of every action taken.

The people arguing for a hands-on, fully in control approach are losing ground by the week, in my opinion.

Re: Auto mode is now the default in Claude Code

#212

Post by ben_w »

embedding-shape wrote: post #206
coldtea wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't that what the people crying over their deleted or leaked data were doing too? "I've been playing Russian roulette with a 1024 chamber gun for a year now, it's fine"

> Isn't that what the people crying over their deleted or leaked data were doing too? Probably using not-SOTA models, or on the lower reasoning levels, they tend to be a bit more tally-ho when it comes to destructive operations, especially in longer tasks as the agent gets worse and worse as the context grows. Suddenly running some stupid command seems like the right way to go, and then $HOME is gone.

If the director of alignment at Meta Superintelligence Labs gets it wrong, what hope does anyone else have?

Re: Auto mode is now the default in Claude Code

#213

Post by ValentineC »

ben8bit wrote: post #209

6 months ago: get Claude to do some work, have GPT review it, ask Claude to first verify findings before actioning. Now: get GPT to do some work, have Claude review it, question Claude about a finding that is surprising to me because I thought the functionality was already in place. [Claude/Opus 5 Max goes looking] "You're right — I was wrong about that." Our Claude license ends in about 2 weeks and we're not renewin…

> [Claude/Opus 5 Max goes looking]

The general consensus I've seen for Opus 5 on the various Claude subreddits is to only use it in low or medium effort.

I've reverted to Opus 4.8 for most of my work. It's crazy that Opus 5 was lauded at release for scoring so highly on benchmarks.

Re: Auto mode is now the default in Claude Code

#214

Post by ValentineC »

usef- wrote: post #164
paul_h wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think all of Anthropic's own staff use --dangerously else they'd work on the usability of the massively imperfect 1-approve-once and 2-approve-forever multi-choice and outcome.

That's exactly why Auto mode was made, and reportedly what they all use. It's the easy option, with a better safety score than human review. (This isn't vibes: they're red-teaming Auto mode heavily)

> It's the easy option, with a better safety score than human review.

Considering I went through a phase before I started using Claude Code where I'd eventually reach a point where I'd mindlessly approve ridiculously long command chains, I believe this.

As the article writes: "many users are clicking through reflexively rather than reviewing each command".

It's far better (for my working style, anyway) to have some external isolation/sandboxing, but leave the actual command approval to LLM.

Re: Auto mode is now the default in Claude Code

#215

Post by user43928 »

etoxin wrote: post #29
lukan wrote: post #16

"We spent the last several months testing whether auto mode is as safe or safer than an average user clicking through prompts." Yeah, might make sense from their perspective, but no thank you. I also do click through at times without reading everything, but I like to stay in control, learn about the new code and change direction if it goes off track. This would just burn more tokens because I have to throw away much…

At this stage with the latest models with "increased persistence" and the sheer amount of supply chain attacks, you'd be insane not running these tools in a sandbox.

Yet millions do just that without any widely reported issues yet.

For supply chain attacks, there has not been a comprehensive solution, if for example you have to use a number of npm dependencies.

No one has the capacity to review changes to these dependencies when you upgrade them.

Now, if only we had an automatic tool that could intelligently review a large amount of code changes for malicious or vulnerable additions...

Re: Auto mode is now the default in Claude Code

#216

Post by DaedalusII »

ben8bit wrote: post #209

6 months ago: get Claude to do some work, have GPT review it, ask Claude to first verify findings before actioning. Now: get GPT to do some work, have Claude review it, question Claude about a finding that is surprising to me because I thought the functionality was already in place. [Claude/Opus 5 Max goes looking] "You're right — I was wrong about that." Our Claude license ends in about 2 weeks and we're not renewin…

the biggest problem with claude is it is so negative and tells you things can't be done, are wrong, have hidden problems, etc

I run things through grok to make them positive again after claude does the main work

Re: Auto mode is now the default in Claude Code

#217

Post by this_user »

ValentineC wrote: post #213
ben8bit wrote: post #209

6 months ago: get Claude to do some work, have GPT review it, ask Claude to first verify findings before actioning. Now: get GPT to do some work, have Claude review it, question Claude about a finding that is surprising to me because I thought the functionality was already in place. [Claude/Opus 5 Max goes looking] "You're right — I was wrong about that." Our Claude license ends in about 2 weeks and we're not renewin…

> [Claude/Opus 5 Max goes looking] The general consensus I've seen for Opus 5 on the various Claude subreddits is to only use it in low or medium effort. I've reverted to Opus 4.8 for most of my work. It's crazy that Opus 5 was lauded at release for scoring so highly on benchmarks.

That always seems to happen upon release of a new model. People look at the benchmarks, which look good, because the model was almost certainly optimised for that. Then they start actually using it, and after a week or two we get the real assessment that is almost always less impressive than the initial reactions.

Re: Auto mode is now the default in Claude Code

#218

Post by ben8bit »

ValentineC wrote: post #213
ben8bit wrote: post #209

6 months ago: get Claude to do some work, have GPT review it, ask Claude to first verify findings before actioning. Now: get GPT to do some work, have Claude review it, question Claude about a finding that is surprising to me because I thought the functionality was already in place. [Claude/Opus 5 Max goes looking] "You're right — I was wrong about that." Our Claude license ends in about 2 weeks and we're not renewin…

> [Claude/Opus 5 Max goes looking] The general consensus I've seen for Opus 5 on the various Claude subreddits is to only use it in low or medium effort. I've reverted to Opus 4.8 for most of my work. It's crazy that Opus 5 was lauded at release for scoring so highly on benchmarks.

Interesting, I generally use High for all models, even non Anthropic ones.

This was one of the few times I tried Max, and the problem was the code (it listed as a "hole") was directly adjacent to the problem area, and not especially complex.

Kind of like looking at a washing machine and telling the customer to be careful because the inlet pipe will pump water into an empty box.

Re: Auto mode is now the default in Claude Code

#219

Post by ben8bit »

DaedalusII wrote: post #216
ben8bit wrote: post #209

6 months ago: get Claude to do some work, have GPT review it, ask Claude to first verify findings before actioning. Now: get GPT to do some work, have Claude review it, question Claude about a finding that is surprising to me because I thought the functionality was already in place. [Claude/Opus 5 Max goes looking] "You're right — I was wrong about that." Our Claude license ends in about 2 weeks and we're not renewin…

the biggest problem with claude is it is so negative and tells you things can't be done, are wrong, have hidden problems, etc I run things through grok to make them positive again after claude does the main work

Grok 4.5 is actually good though (as a workhorse model).

Re: Auto mode is now the default in Claude Code

#220

Post by drdec »

zarzavat wrote: post #203
coldtea wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've never seen Claude do or even suggest anything remotely dangerous when I'm just giving it incremental tasks and reviewing the output. "I've never had a bullet hit me yet"

I don't use yolo mode but if you allow your agents to both write code and run/test it, then it's basically equivalent to running in yolo mode anyway. The other day I caught Claude including a rm -rf equivalent (fs.rmdir({ recursive: true, force: true })) in my code, to clean up temporary directories. It was fine, but that kind of code is only one misconfigured environment variable away from blasting away your $HOME.

I've set up a second user on my machine just for running AI. That way I have the additional layer of OS protections against it doing something like that.
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