How to make Claude Code proactive

What “proactive” means for Claude Code

By default Claude Code is reactive: you type, it works, it stops and waits. Making it proactive takes three separate things, and most guides only cover one of them.

• It acts without asking about every step: an output style and a permission mode that let it make routine decisions.
• It starts work on its own: a loop, a schedule or an event that begins a turn without you typing.
• It knows what to work on next: a goal or a queue of work, so each wake-up has something useful to do.

Step by step: make Claude Code proactive

1. Turn on the Proactive output style

   This is what people usually mean by “Claude Code proactive mode”. It isn't a mode but a built-in output style: Claude starts implementing as soon as you give it a task, makes reasonable assumptions on routine decisions instead of asking, and skips planning unless you ask for a plan. It still checks with you before deleting data or touching shared or production systems, and it doesn't change your permission prompts. You can also pick it under Output style in /config.

   /output-style Proactive

2. Pick a permission mode for unattended work

   An agent that stops at every permission prompt isn't proactive. Auto mode runs actions with background safety checks instead of asking, and acceptEdits lets file edits through while still asking about other commands. Keep bypassPermissions, which skips every check, for isolated containers and VMs.

   claude --permission-mode auto

3. Keep it going until the job is done with /goal

   /goal takes a condition. After each turn a small model checks whether it's met, and if it isn't, Claude starts another turn by itself. The goal clears once it's met. Write a condition you could check yourself, like a test suite passing.

   /goal all tests in test/auth pass and the lint step is clean

4. Repeat work with /loop while the session is open

   /loop runs a prompt on an interval, or lets Claude choose the delay after each run when you leave the interval out. It lives in the current session: the session has to stay open, recurring loops expire after 7 days, and runs missed while it was busy aren't caught up.

   /loop 30m check CI on my open PRs and fix anything that failed

5. Schedule it for when you're not at the keyboard

   Desktop scheduled tasks run a fresh session on your computer on a schedule, as long as the Claude desktop app is open and the computer is awake. Cloud scheduled tasks, created with /schedule, run on Anthropic's cloud so your computer can be off; they run at most hourly and need a Pro, Max, Ultra, Team or Enterprise plan. For repositories, the official GitHub Action can run Claude Code on a cron schedule.

   /schedule every weekday at 9am, triage new GitHub issues and label them
   
   # .github/workflows/claude.yml
   on:
     schedule:
       - cron: "0 9 * * 1-5"

6. Let events wake it up

   Channels push events into a running session: a Telegram, Discord or iMessage message, a CI failure or a webhook, so Claude reacts without you opening the terminal. Hooks run your own commands at points in Claude's lifecycle, such as before a tool call or when a turn ends. Both need the session to be running.

   claude --channels plugin:telegram@claude-plugins-official

Source: Anthropic's Claude Code documentation on scheduled tasks

Which option fits

What these features still leave to you

Each feature starts a turn. None of them decides what the agent should be doing this week. In practice that leaves gaps:

• A schedule repeats the same prompt. It doesn't pick up the next task from a backlog or remember what yesterday's run finished.
• There's no board where you hand Claude new work and see what it's doing, what it finished and where it's stuck.
• There are no working hours or targets: a loop runs until it expires, not until a number moves.
• With several agents, nothing coordinates them, so each one needs its own prompts and schedules.

Give Claude Code a standing job

Crewmark turns a Claude Code conversation into an AI employee with a role, a goal, working hours and a heartbeat, and gives it work through a board. It runs in your real Claude Code on the plan you already pay for.

1. Hire an employee and connect its conversation

   Pick a role, such as SEO specialist or software engineer, and run the setup command Crewmark gives you in Claude Code. That conversation becomes the employee, so it keeps its memory of the work between wake-ups.

2. Set working hours and a heartbeat

   A small background program on your computer, the Crewmark daemon, sends the employee's heartbeat prompt into that same conversation every 15, 30 or 60 minutes during its hours, and leaves it alone outside them. A heartbeat that arrives while the agent is busy waits until it's idle.

3. Assign issues on the board

   When you assign an issue or comment on one, the news arrives in the agent's conversation as a message. If the conversation is closed, Crewmark resumes it with claude -p --resume in auto mode, so the work still gets picked up.

4. Measure it on a number

   Give each employee a KPI, such as Search Console clicks a month. It plans its issues toward that number, moves them across the board, comments on progress and messages you when it needs a decision.

Use them together

The built-in features and Crewmark stack. Turn on the Proactive output style and auto mode in the employee's conversation so each heartbeat gets real work done, use /goal inside an issue that has a clear finish line, and check in from your phone with Claude Code Remote Control. Running Codex instead? See how to make Codex proactive.

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