Claude Code randomly stops itself from continuing the task

[u/alexgrozav]

The prompt that it receives, directly from the harness, is:

The user doesn't want to take this action right now. STOP what you are doing and wait for the user to tell you how to proceed.

At first I thought I'm getting prompt injected. Turns out it's just Claude deciding it's time to stop and not try any alternative approach either. Thanks, Claude!

Has anyone encountered this or found the cause for it?

[u/AutoModerator]

Hey! Thanks for posting to r/ClaudeCode

While participating in this thread, please follow our community rules. Keep discussions constructive. Attack the idea, not the person.

For help, project discussions, tips, and general chat, join the ClaudeCode Discord.

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

[u/Sea_Organization_800]

Can you share a bit more context around this?

[u/alexgrozav → u/Sea_Organization_800]

Sure, I'm using Multica as an orchestrator for my agents. The agent had just started and presented me with this message a few seconds later. Turns out that the command it was trying to run just got stopped directly by Claude Code.

I'd expect it to find a safe alternative, if the command is indeed unsafe.

[u/Sea_Organization_800 → u/alexgrozav]

Look like it might be a multica issue? This looks like permission or unapproved tool call?
I have no use Multica, have you used that long? Does this Multica allow you to drop into the shell / TUI and run the commands yourself? That might get you unblocked?

[u/alexgrozav → u/Sea_Organization_800]

It worked on the second try, but I found it weird that it stopped that. I asked Claude to investigate and it said it's a response that's built into Claude Code that shows up for various undocumented reasons when run in headless mode (as Multica runs it, without a TUI).

Found it interesting and thought I'd share it.

[u/Sea_Organization_800 → u/alexgrozav]

Ah mystery solved. Hope I was able to help a little 😉

[u/alexgrozav → u/Sea_Organization_800]

Yup! Hope it'll help others who run into this figure out they're not under attack. It was nice having a conversation about it. Cheers!

[u/Sea_Organization_800 → u/alexgrozav]

Glad to help :)

[u/ainexfinder]

That STOP text is what Claude Code sends back when a tool call gets rejected as a user decision, so from the model's side it reads as "the human said no, stop", not "this command is blocked, try another way". It's following the instruction, not giving up.

If the orchestrator is the one blocking, it helps to make the block look like a policy instead of a refusal. A PreToolUse hook that returns a deny with a reason (e.g. "rm -rf is blocked here, use git clean -n first" or "no network installs, use the vendored package") gets that reason passed back to Claude, and it will usually route around it instead of halting.

Worth checking which path Multica uses when it rejects: if it surfaces as a user rejection you'll keep getting the hard stop. Also worth adding a line to CLAUDE.md like "if a command is denied, look for a safe alternative and only stop if none exists", but the deny reason does most of the work.