Tutorial: Run Modes and Plans

Run Modes

Each task runs in an agent session in one of three run modes, which say how much the agent may do without stopping to ask you:

Plan investigates and proposes, but changes nothing. You will be able to review the plan and ask for changes, and work won't start until you approve it.

Ask For Approval asks you before it acts. Anything that is pre-approved runs without prompting -- by default that is edits inside your project's directories -- and everything else stops for you.

Auto-Approve lets the agent's own judgement decide what needs asking about. This is the setting for letting it work without constant interruption.

The run modes are Wing's, and each agent carries them out with whatever it actually offers. Not all agents have all three -- goose has no read-only mode, for instance.

While the Tasks Manager is on, it chooses the run mode for each task, and whether the task starts a new agent session or continues in an existing one. Research runs in Plan mode, and other work in a mode that can change files. What agents may do without asking is set on the Permissions tab of the Manager's settings.

Now let's give the app a real look. On the Plan page of the Tasks tool, add this task and mark it Ready:

Let's add CSS so that this app looks like a real website. Use a clean dark mode design.

The Manager schedules it like any other task. Once it's done, reload the page in your browser to see the results.

Try a Plan

The bookmarks app is now large enough that a structural refactor is worth planning before it runs. Add this task on the Plan tab of the Tasks tool:

Refactor app.py so the bookmark routes live in a Flask Blueprint, and split the SQLite access out into a small db.py module with the connection-handling and query functions. Keep the existing tests passing. Don't change any external behavior.

The Manager decides by itself when a task needs a plan first. To insist on one, right-click on the task and check Research First. Then mark it Ready.

The Manager runs the task in Plan mode. The agent may ask you questions about how to proceed, then produces a plan and stops, and the task waits on the Questions tab. Read the plan there, and add comments if you want changes. Revise Plan has the agent revise its plan, and Implement Plan accepts it so the work can go ahead. Nothing changes until you accept the plan.

Try this now, to get a feel for it. This task shouldn't change the functionality of the app, just the design of the code behind it.

Planning is particularly useful when you want to start on a task while another task is already making changes to the same files. A task in Plan mode cannot make any edits, so the Manager can run it alongside the tasks that are changing those files.