Articles

Claude Code "bash denied by auto mode": Why It Blocks, "could not evaluate" and "unavailable for this model" Tested

In auto mode, a blocked Bash call usually shows one of three messages: denied by auto mode, Auto mode could not evaluate this action, or auto mode unavailable for this model. I ran 40-odd real sessions on Claude Code 2.1.280. denied means the classifier judged the action out of scope, most often [Code from External]: it would run external code you never named. Retrying won't help. Name the source in your prompt, or declare it trusted in autoMode.environment in user-level settings. could not evaluate means the classifier returned no usable verdict. unavailable for this model means the model is older than claude-opus-4-6; under claude -p it is silently downgraded, with only a WARN line in the debug log. In 2.1.280 the verdict is computed server-side and returned with the main response. Behind a relay gateway that only admits Claude Code clients, the local fallback classifier request gets a 503, which is a reliable cause of "temporarily unavailable (server error)".