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Planning workflow

Plan mode is for work that benefits from research and a written approach before any files change. The agent investigates your codebase, asks clarifying questions when needed, and saves a plan artifact you can review and refine.

The composer always offers Ask, Plan, and Act. On WhoseDev Cloud, the backend can still reject a Plan or Act turn if your subscription’s allowed agent modes do not include it. Local Ollama Plan also requires a model that passed Plan qualification. BYOK is not gated by the managed-mode list. See Plans and billing.

When to use Plan mode

Section titled “When to use Plan mode”

Use Plan when:

  • The change spans multiple files or modules
  • Requirements are unclear and you want structured questions first
  • You want an explicit implementation plan before Act mode edits anything

Use Ask for read-only exploration without producing a plan. Use Act when you are ready to implement.

How planning works

Section titled “How planning works”
  1. Switch to Plan mode in the chat composer (Shift+Tab or the mode picker).
  2. Describe the outcome you want and any constraints.
  3. The agent may call ask_plan_questions to present multiple-choice options.
  4. When ready, it calls submit_plan, which saves a plan under your user plans directory (by default ~/.whosedev/plans/).
  5. Review the plan in the editor or preview.

Plans include metadata such as the originating session so you can return to the same conversation later.

Continue or revise a plan

Section titled “Continue or revise a plan”
Command What it does
WhoseDev: Open Saved Plans Pick a plan from ~/.whosedev/plans/
WhoseDev: Continue Planning Reopen a plan and resume Plan mode to revise it
WhoseDev: Save Plan to Workspace Copy the current plan into .whosedev/plans/ in the workspace (opt-in)

When you continue planning, the agent receives the saved plan path and can call submit_plan again with an updated version.

Build from a plan

Section titled “Build from a plan”

When you approve a plan, hand off to Act mode:

Command What it does
Build (plan editor) Implement the latest saved revision of the active plan in Act mode
WhoseDev: Build From Plan Select a saved plan and start an Act turn to implement it

Build turns are marked with plan metadata so the agent implements the saved artifact rather than improvising a new approach.

Tip: Stay in the WhoseDev conversation that created the plan when using Build from the plan editor. If the session is unavailable, open the plan and use Build From Plan instead.

Example prompt

Section titled “Example prompt”
Plan a refactor to extract authentication into a dedicated module.
Identify the current entry points, list files that would change,
and call out risks before we implement anything.
Section titled “Related topics”