What happened
A startup’s coding agent, running on a Codex fallback, stopped mid-run and asked the owner for permission before pushing to main. The owner filed that as a bug and titled it “never asks permission to push to main”.
Why it happened
The ask came from the agent loop’s own prompt, which told the model “before a step with consequences they should approve, such as deleting data or pushing, set it to approval”. The owner wanted the opposite: “default approval of everything”.
How it ended
It was fixed the same day: the loop now tells the model every step is already approved and never to ask for permission. A release gate test checks that a run which pushes to main finishes without a single approval event.
The remaining safeguard is a Stop button.
