Term
Plan/Act mode
A two-stage agent workflow: in Plan mode the agent reasons about the task and outputs a structured plan; in Act mode the agent executes the plan with file edits and commands. Lets the user approve the plan before any code is touched.
Background
Plan/Act mode was popularised by Cline (formerly Claude Dev) and adopted by other agents including Roo Code and Bolt. The plan stage is read-only — the agent surveys the codebase, decides what to change, and presents a checklist. The user approves or revises; the agent then executes step-by-step in Act mode. This pattern reduces wasted tokens on dead-end execution and gives the user a control point before disk writes.