# Plan
Plan mode is for when you want the thinking without the execution to review, refine, or share a technical approach before committing to an implementation. It's useful at the start of a large feature, when evaluating architectural options, or when you want a structured breakdown of what needs to change before anything is touched.
***
### What Plan produces
A Plan mode output typically includes:
* A summary of explicit requirements what was stated in the prompt
* Implicit requirements things that follow logically but weren't mentioned (the ones that cause problems in week three if they're not accounted for)
* Stack selection with explicit reasoning for each choice
* A breakdown of services and how they interact
* A dependency-ordered task graph, grouped by layer
* Open questions or tradeoffs worth discussing before proceeding
The output is prose and structured lists, not code. It's designed to be reviewed, pushed back on, or shared with a teammate.
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### Iterating on a plan
Plan output is a starting point. You can respond to any part of it before committing to execution:
```
We're already using MongoDB across the rest of the stack — design
tenant isolation around that instead of PostgreSQL.
```
```
The ingestion API and dashboard can share the same process for now.
We'll split them later if we need to scale.
```
Cora will revise the plan based on your constraints. Once you're satisfied, switch to Code mode or use Auto, which will transition automatically after plan confirmation.
***
### Using Plan on existing codebases
Plan mode is not only for new projects. You can run it against an existing codebase to get a structured description of what's there, identify architectural inconsistencies, or plan a large refactor before touching any files.
```
Review the current authentication system and plan a migration
from session-based to JWT. List every file that will need to change
and flag any breaking changes.
```
***
### Treating the plan as a contract
Once you've confirmed a plan and Code mode begins execution, Cora builds against it. If you want to change the approach mid-execution, say so explicitly and stop the current run rather than letting it continue. Partial execution against a plan you've mentally revised produces inconsistent code that's harder to clean up than starting the phase again.
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```
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