Comment by tekacs | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tekacs | Hacker News Reader

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It kinda... does? The problem is that folks have been flailing on the right UX for this.

This is what build vs. plan mode _does_ in OpenCode. OpenAI has taken a different approach in Codex, where Plan mode can perform any actions (it just has an extra plan tool), but in OC in plan mode, IIRC write operations are turned off.

The screenshot shows that the experience had just flipped from Plan to Build mode, which is why the system reminder nudged it into acting!

Now... I forget, but OC may well be flipping automatically when you accept a plan, or letting the model flip it or any other kind of absurdity, but... folks are definitely trying to do the approval split in-harness, they're just failing badly at the UX so far.

And I fully believe that Plan vs. Build is a roundly mediocre UX for this.

The switch from plan mode to build is not always clearly defined. On a number of occasions, I've been in plan mode and enter a secondary follow up prompt to modify the plan. However, instead of updating the plan, the follow up text is taken as approval to build and it automatically switches to building.

Ask mode, on the other hand, has always explicitly indicated that I need to switch out of ask mode to perform any actions.

This is my experience with Cursor CLI.

Does Codex actually have a Plan Mode, or is there a mode switch I'm missing? I find myself having to manually tell it to 'make a plan' every time.

and if it has directory permissions, sometimes it just skips the confirmation step and starts executing as soon as it thinks the plan is ready.

cmd-shift-p (at least in vscode)

shift-tab in cli

It actually work, got "Plan mode (shift+tab to cycle)" at corner.

reading the manual , there is Slash commands /plan /plan switch to Plan mode

It seems that, unlike OpenCode, Codex doesn't show a notice for mode by default.

This applies well if you’re writing code.

But often I am using Claude to investigate a problem like this “why won’t this mDNS sender work” and it needs a bunch of trial and error steps to find the problem and each subsequent step is a brand new unanticipated command.

The OpenCode plan experience has been pretty bad (the community has accepted this, at least on Discord). The community's adopted a handful of plugins to make the experience better, and also guardrail when the agent switches versus doesn't

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