Headless Mode

What is a Headless Mode

Headless mode is running Claude Code non-interactively, most often from a script, a CI pipeline, or a scheduled job, passing a prompt in and reading the result back out programmatically rather than through a live terminal session someone is watching.

This fits tasks that are well-defined enough to run without a human present to answer questions as they come up: a nightly dependency-update check, a scheduled content pass, a CI step that reviews a pull request's diff and posts a comment. The task has to be scoped tightly enough that it does not need to stop and ask something mid-run.

Because no one is watching a headless run live, it is usually paired with a tighter permission mode and stronger guardrails than an interactive session would need, there is no one there to catch a bad decision as it happens. Headless mode overlaps heavily with AFK work, the difference is mainly in how the session is invoked, from a script or pipeline rather than a terminal a person opened themselves.