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Plan Mode

With Plan Mode on, the AI Analyst replies with a Suggested plan describing what it intends to do, and waits for your decision before running anything. Use it for complex questions, or when a wrong analysis would be costly to redo.

Availability

  • Who can do this: members with the Chat capability in the active Workspace.

Turning Plan Mode on or off

Select the Plan button in the bottom-left of the message box to turn Plan Mode on or off.

  • Plan Mode is off by default.
  • When Plan Mode is on, the Plan button is highlighted and the message box shows a colored border. Hover the button to see Turn off plan mode.
  • Your last choice is remembered in this browser, so new conversations start with Plan Mode on or off as you left it.
  • Each conversation keeps its own Plan Mode setting. When you reopen a conversation, it shows that conversation's setting. The setting is saved with the conversation when you send a message.
  • The Plan button is disabled while the AI Analyst is generating a response.
  • Read-only conversations, such as conversations shared with you, don't show the Plan button.

Reviewing a plan

The Suggested plan card replaces the message box until you decide. Choose one of these actions:

Action What happens Plan Mode afterwards
Approve The AI Analyst runs the plan. Off
Edit You change the plan text yourself, then select Save (or Cancel edit). Your version is sent as the plan, and the AI Analyst keeps planning from it. On
Keep planning The AI Analyst reconsiders and proposes a different plan. On
Cancel Planning stops. Off

You can type in Add a note (optional) before you choose an action, for example to say what to change. The note is sent as your message along with your decision.

Each decision appears in the conversation as your message, labeled Plan approved, Plan edited, Plan rejected (for Keep planning) or Plan cancelled, with any note you added. Below it, a card named after the plan's heading, with View plan underneath, opens the plan. For an edited plan, it shows your version.

In Slack and Teams

Availability

  • Deployment: Not available on air-gapped self-managed deployments, because the Slack and Microsoft Teams integrations are unavailable there.

When you use Actian AI Analyst in Slack or Microsoft Teams:

  • Add --plan (or --plan on) anywhere in a message to turn Plan Mode on for that thread, and --plan off to turn it off. The flag isn't case-sensitive, and it's removed before your question is sent to the AI Analyst.
  • The setting belongs to the thread, not to you. It applies to everyone in the thread and stays until someone changes it.
  • In a thread that already has a conversation, a message that contains only the flag switches the thread's Plan Mode without asking anything.
  • Plans appear as a card with Approve, Edit, Reject and Cancel buttons. Reject does the same as Keep planning in Explorer. There is no note field in Slack or Teams.
  • In Slack, Edit opens an Edit plan dialog with the plan filled in. In Teams, Edit opens an editor inside the card with a Submit button.
  • After a decision, the card shows the outcome and the AI Analyst's follow-up is posted in the same thread. Only the first decision on a plan counts.

Plan Mode in Studio

  • The Test your analyst panel on an AI Analyst in Studio has its own Plan button. It's remembered separately from the Explorer setting.
  • Steward in Studio has its own Plan mode toggle, where the Steward drafts a plan for you to review before it changes anything. See Using Steward.

When to use Plan Mode

Plan Mode is most useful when:

  • Your question spans multiple business areas and you want to steer the approach.
  • You're running a high-stakes analysis where a wrong interpretation would be time-consuming to redo.
  • You're running a structured recurring analysis from a Saved Prompt. Turn on Plan before sending it so you can confirm the approach. Saved prompts don't turn Plan Mode on by themselves.

For routine questions, such as KPI lookups, quick comparisons or simple charts, Plan Mode adds unnecessary friction. Leave it off for day-to-day use and turn it on when you need it.