Gunamaya AI
Plan & Act Modes
Two ways of working with Gunamaya AI, chosen per conversation: think first, or act with lightweight approval as you go.
Plan mode
Plan mode is for anything non-trivial: a feature that touches several files, a refactor whose blast radius you want to understand before committing to it, or a bug whose root cause isn't obvious yet. In Plan mode, Gunamaya AI:
Investigates first
Reads the relevant files, searches the codebase, and — if useful — runs read-only commands to understand the current behavior, without changing anything yet.
Proposes a plan
Lays out the specific files it intends to touch and the approach it will take, in plain language, before writing any code.
Waits for you
You can ask questions, request a different approach, or approve the plan as-is. Nothing is written to disk until you do.
Act mode
Act mode is for smaller, well-understood changes where a full planning phase would just slow you down — fixing a typo, adjusting a style, adding a straightforward function. Gunamaya AI makes the edit directly and shows it to you as a diff; you can accept, reject, or ask for a revision on each change.
Approval still applies in Act mode
Act mode skips the planning step, not your approval. File edits still appear as diffs you review, and anything Gunamaya AI wants to run in the terminal that isn't obviously safe still asks first — see Tools, Rules & Context for exactly what counts as "obviously safe."
Switching modes
The mode selector sits directly above the chat input. Switch modes mid-conversation at any time — a common pattern is starting in Plan mode for a tricky bug, then dropping into Act mode once you and Gunamaya AI have agreed on the fix and just need it applied.
Choosing a mode
| Use Plan mode when… | Use Act mode when… |
|---|---|
| The change spans multiple files or modules | The change is confined to a line or a function |
| You're not sure what's causing a bug yet | You already know exactly what needs to change |
| You want to review an approach before any edits happen | Speed matters more than a review step |
| You're asking Gunamaya AI to design something new | You're asking Gunamaya AI to apply something you've already decided |