agent-signals

032. The Claude question hooks carry the question and the options

View as Markdown Open in Claude Open in ChatGPT
Date
2026-10-30
Agents
Claude Code
Measured on
real machine

Measured

2026-10-30, Claude Code 2.1.314 with --model haiku and --permission-mode default (the question) or --permission-mode plan (the plan), on Linux (Debian 13, x64), in a private tmux server with a throwaway HOME. The scenarios scenarios/claude/dialog-states.sh (three runs) and scenarios/claude/plan-and-resume.sh (one run) recorded every hook payload. The scenarios print only the keys and the shape of tool_input. Measured on: real machine.

What was measured

  1. The prompt "Ask me with your question tool whether I prefer red or blue, then reply with my answer." opened this dialog:

     ☐ Color
Do you prefer red or blue?
❯ 1. Red
     You prefer red.
  2. Blue
     You prefer blue.
  3. Type something.
────────────────────────────
  4. Chat about this
Enter to select · ↑/↓ to navigate · Esc to cancel

  2. The hooks for the question fired in this order: PreToolUse, PermissionRequest, Notification (notification_type: permission_prompt), and after "1." PostToolUse, then Stop.

  3. PreToolUse and PermissionRequest have tool_name: AskUserQuestion and a tool_input of this shape:

    {"questions": [{"question": str, "header": str,
                "options": [{"label": str, "description": str}, ...],
                "multiSelect": bool}]}

    In each run there was one question with two options. question was the dialog line "Do you prefer red or blue?", header was "Color", and the labels were "Red" and "Blue", each with its description line. PermissionRequest has no permission_suggestions for this tool.

  4. The rows "3. Type something." and "4. Chat about this" are not in tool_input. Claude Code adds them. Two options in tool_input gave four numbered rows on the screen.

  5. The PostToolUse tool_input and tool_response have the same questions, and also answers and annotations. answers maps the question text to the label of the answer.

  6. A single question with a digit answer opened no review screen. The digit "1" closed the dialog at once (fact 004).

  7. The plan approval. In plan mode the agent wrote the plan file with the Write tool, and then called ExitPlanMode. The hooks were PreToolUse, PermissionRequest and Notification (permission_prompt). The tool_input keys were plan (the plan text) and planFilePath (~/.claude/plans/<name>.md). PermissionRequest had no permission_suggestions. The dialog was:

     Claude has written up a plan and is ready to execute. Would you like to proceed?
 ❯ 1. Yes, and use auto mode
   2. Yes, manually approve edits
   3. Tell Claude what to change
      shift+tab to approve with this feedback

    After "1.", PostToolUse had an empty tool_input and a tool_response with plan, isAgent and filePath. The permission_mode of the next hooks was auto.

Mechanism

A reader can build a structured record of a question from PreToolUse or PermissionRequest with no screen parse: the question, the header, the labels, the descriptions, and multiSelect. It must add the two rows that Claude Code draws: a free-text row and "Chat about this". In the measured dialog, the digit of option N of tool_input was N.

For a plan approval the hooks give the plan text, not the option labels. The labels come only from the screen.

Incident

None. tg-bridge asked for a structured record of a dialog with its options.

Screens

None.

Not measured