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Enter plan mode

Use bare /mode to choose between normal, plan, orchestrate, auto, and yolo modes. Normal is the startup default. If multiple explicit startup modes are present, the safer mode wins: plan, then orchestrate, then normal, then auto, then yolo.

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What can run

Plan mode allows file reading, search, file metadata, paged tool-result reading, web fetch and search, skill loading, memory search, and clarification questions. Interactive plan mode also allows shell, but every command asks for approval, even when shell is always allowed in normal mode; headless --plan and subagent workers keep it denied. It denies processes, Python, Bun, general writes and edits, subagents, and every MCP tool.
Why an allowlist: New skills and MCP servers can add tools the host has never seen. In plan mode, unknown tools are denied rather than assumed harmless.

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One writable destination

Markdown plans directly inside docs/plan/ are the only writes plan mode permits. The recommended name is docs/plan/YYYY-MM-DD-feature-name.md.
The agent decides whether the work warrants a file and what to call it. A short question may receive only an answer. A multi-step change should leave a durable plan you can review before implementation. In the interactive TUI, plan writes and edits still pass through ordinary tool approval; an always-allow grant cannot bypass the plan-directory fence. In headless runs, plan-file writes require --auto-approve because nobody is present to approve them; the plan-directory fence still applies.

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Approve and implement

After a successful interactive turn writes or revises a plan, the TUI asks whether to approve it and start implementing, once queued prompts have finished. This is a separate yes/no decision from approving the file write.
  • y switches to normal mode and starts an implementation turn referencing the saved plans. Normal tool approvals still apply.
  • n keeps plan mode on. The prompt is not repeated until a plan is written or revised.
A turn that only investigates does not trigger this prompt. You can also leave manually with /mode normal; the host reports plans successfully written during the episode. Headless runs do not perform this interactive approval-to-implementation handoff.