Originally Posted by guy153

The basic idea seems to be that with a clutch the cage has extra resistance against rotating counter-clockwise (as viewed from the right hand side of the bike) but rotates clockwise just the same as before.

I get that this stops the chain shaking around as much when you ride over bumps without increasing the tension of the top part of the chain. But what happens when you shift into a larger sprocket? Is the clutch supposed to somehow disengage to let the cage rotate to the new position it needs to be in now that there is a bit less chain slack to take up? If so how does that work?