Switching to YOLO mode from plan exit prompt makes the model confused

[mbleigh]

What happened?

I had an exit plan mode prompt, and rather than select one of the options I went into YOLO mode. This immediately sent...something...to the model which then said "You exited plan mode without any feedback."

What did you expect to happen?

My intent was "start executing but not just with edit approval but full YOLO.

Client information

Client Information

Run gemini to enter the interactive CLI, then run the /about command.

> /about

╭────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╮
│                                                                                                                                                        │
│ About Gemini CLI                                                                                                                                       │
│                                                                                                                                                        │
│ CLI Version                                          0.31.0                                                                                            │
│ Git Commit                                           72c653354                                                                                         │
│ Model                                                Auto (Gemini 3)                                                                                   │
│ Sandbox                                              no sandbox                                                                                        │
│ OS                                                   darwin                                                                                            │
│ Auth Method                                          gemini-api-key                                                                                    │
│                                                                                                                                                        │
╰────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╯

Login information

No response

Anything else we need to know?

No response

[Aarchi-07]

What happens is when you toggle YOLO mode while the exit_plan_mode confirmation dialog is active, handleApprovalModeChange auto-approves the pending tool call via the MessageBus with outcome: ProceedOnce but no payload. In ExitPlanModeInvocation.execute(), this.approvalPayload is null, so payload?.approved is falsy and it falls into the "plan rejected, no feedback" branch - returning "Plan rejected. No feedback provided." to the model. This is the opposite of the user's intent. Additionally, getApprovalModeDescription() explicitly throws for ApprovalMode.YOLO, so even passing approvalMode: YOLO in the payload would crash. The exit_plan_mode tool expects a structured payload (approved, approvalMode, feedback) but the generic auto-approval path in handleApprovalModeChange was never wired to provide one.

Possible fix would be In handleApprovalModeChange, when auto-approving an exit_plan_mode tool call, send a proper payload { approved: true, approvalMode: ApprovalMode.AUTO_EDIT }, since YOLO subsumes AUTO_EDIT behavior and the YOLO config is already set independently by useApprovalModeIndicator.

[jerop]

• at this time, we require explicit approval for plans; shift+tab and ctrl+y don't imply plan approval because what if I just gave up and decided to switch modes to do something else?
• an alternative could be that we add a third option in the approval dialog for "Yes, dangerously approve all (YOLO)" but we didn't add this out of abundance of caution

  gemini-cli/packages/cli/src/ui/components/ExitPlanModeDialog.tsx

  Lines 51 to 54 in 7c9fceb

  	enum ApprovalOption {
  	Auto = 'Yes, automatically accept edits',
  	Manual = 'Yes, manually accept edits',
  	}

  
  just checked with core team and we don't want to add this option so that users have to intentionally jump into YOLO mode until we improve security for this e.g. sandboxing (cc @jacob314)