What
A subagent is a separate Claude instance that the main session hands a task to. Its definition can set permissionMode, the setting that controls how Claude Code asks before taking actions. When that is auto but auto mode is not available, the subagent now keeps the main session's permission mode and shows a warning that auto mode is unavailable to this subagent.
Auto mode can be unavailable for one of these reasons:
- settings
- a circuit breaker, an automatic shut-off
- the model in use
Why
Subagents no longer run as though auto mode applied when it does not. Watch for the warning if a subagent you defined behaves differently than expected.
Names in the bundlepermissionMode
The entry above is what we published on the day. These lines were added later, as Anthropic's own pages caught up, and they sit beside the original rather than replacing it.
Added since
A small documentation edit on Configure permissions touched a line naming permissionMode after this was published.
**Subagent inheritance:** A subagent runs in the parent session's permission mode unless you set `permissionMode` on its [`AgentDefinition`](/docs/en/agent-sdk/typescript#agentdefinition) and the parent session is in `default`, `dontAsk`, …agent-sdk/permissions see the edit
One source agreesOne thing we can check says the same as this entry.
Anthropic's documentation agrees
A small documentation edit on Configure permissions touched a line naming permissionMode after this was published.