Overreach

"I'll take that as a go" (you never said go)

“我就当你同意了”（你根本没说同意）

The agent asks for approval of a plan, then treats something that is not approval (a shell command you ran, an interrupt, a tool error, silence) as the green light and starts editing files.

Applies to: Claude Code

Symptom

You are still reviewing or editing the plan, and new files or edits appear. The transcript says something like "I'll take that as a signal to start implementing" right after an action of yours that wasn't a reply to the question.

Why it happens

Agents are pulled toward finishing, so any ambiguous signal resolves toward "proceed". @PoliticalMessi: Claude Code said "say \"go\" and I'll start implementing", they ran `git checkout -b` in manual shell mode, and it replied "I'll take that as a signal to start implementing..." ("I never said that!!"). Claude Code issues report the same from the harness side: after the user chose "No, keep planning", a later ExitPlanMode error ("If your plan was already approved, continue with implementation") was read as approval (#50176); an interrupted approval request left the model told it could now make edits (#81976).

Example

Reconstructed from @PoliticalMessi's post.

text

You:    /plan add rate limiting to the API
Agent:  ...plan... Say "go" and I'll start implementing.
You:    ! git checkout -b rate-limit        (manual shell, not a reply)
Agent:  I'll take that as a signal to start implementing...
        Edit src/api/middleware.ts  ...

Copy-paste fixes

Pick the files for the agents you use. Snippets are in English so they work in any repo.

Rules

Claude Code: add to CLAUDE.md

CLAUDE.md

## Only an explicit yes is approval
- When you have asked the user to approve a plan or say "go", wait for a message from the user that
  clearly approves it. Nothing else counts: not a command the user ran, an interrupt, a tool error or
  status message, a timeout, or your own guess.
- If you are unsure whether you were approved, ask again in one line. Do not edit files while unsure.
- Implement only what was approved. If the plan grew while you wrote it, show the extra items and ask.

Rules

Codex, Copilot coding agent and others: add to AGENTS.md

AGENTS.md

## Only an explicit yes is approval
- When you have asked the user to approve a plan or say "go", wait for a message from the user that
  clearly approves it. Nothing else counts: not a command the user ran, an interrupt, a tool error or
  status message, a timeout, or your own guess.
- If you are unsure whether you were approved, ask again in one line. Do not edit files while unsure.
- Implement only what was approved. If the plan grew while you wrote it, show the extra items and ask.

Cursor rule

Cursor: project rule

.cursor/rules/approval-it-gave-itself.mdc

---
description: "AgentFails: 'I'll take that as a go' (you never said go)"
alwaysApply: true
---

## Only an explicit yes is approval
- When you have asked the user to approve a plan or say "go", wait for a message from the user that
  clearly approves it. Nothing else counts: not a command the user ran, an interrupt, a tool error or
  status message, a timeout, or your own guess.
- If you are unsure whether you were approved, ask again in one line. Do not edit files while unsure.
- Implement only what was approved. If the plan grew while you wrote it, show the extra items and ask.

Sources and credit

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