Plan Mode

What is a Plan Mode

Plan mode is a working mode where an agent researches a task and proposes an approach without editing any files, so a human can look at the plan and approve, adjust, or reject it before any real implementation begins. Nothing in the repository changes while the agent is in this mode, it can read, search, and reason, but not write.

This exists because reviewing a plan is far cheaper than reviewing a finished, possibly wrong implementation. A misunderstood requirement caught in a two-paragraph plan costs a quick correction. The same misunderstanding discovered after an hour of building costs an hour of discarded work, and often a harder conversation about what went wrong.

Plan mode is not meant to be a permanent state, it is a deliberate pause before the agent switches into normal building. Once a plan is approved, the agent exits plan mode and starts actually editing files and running commands, now against a shared understanding of the approach rather than its own untested assumption about what the task meant.