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What is Discussion Mode?

Bolt.new Discussion Mode offers project-specific insights without generating any code. This feature leverages Gemini 2.0 Flash with search grounding, enabling the model to dynamically access both our support documentation and sources from the internet. Discussion mode provides high-quality, up-to-date answers about the wide range of technologies you use in building your application.

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Key Features

  • Project context awareness: Every discussion message includes your project codebase for context-aware responses, as well as the 6 most recent messages.

  • Search grounding: When the AI answers a question, if necessary it pulls in real-time, up-to-date information from trusted sources like Google Search instead of just relying on what it was trained on. This helps ensure the answers are accurate, relevant, and not outdated. When a search has been conducted, the source(s) will be displayed at the top of the response.

    For example:

    • If you ask about the latest Stripe API updates, the AI won’t just rely on old knowledge, it will search for the latest documentation and give you a more reliable answer.
    • If you ask about a bug in a popular library, it can check forums or support pages for the most recent solutions.

  • Quick Action buttons: After every discussion mode response, users can take immediate actions such as:

    • “Implement this plan” (auto-switches to Build Mode to apply changes)
    • “Show an example”
    • “Refine this idea”

    The exact quick action buttons are contextual and will vary based on your project and what you are discussing.

  • Non-code discussions: Allows users to debug issues, receive tool recommendations, and get product or project strategy guidance without generating code. No code is generated in Discussion Mode.

  • When in Build Mode, if an error is generated, you have an option to discuss it first and debug, before fixing.

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How to use Discussion Mode

In the Bolt prompt box, click the chat icon to toggle between Discussion Mode and Build Mode.

Next, start your discussion! Think of Discussion Mode as having a smart teammate who you can talk things through with. It’s excellent for weighing trade-offs, trying to debug something, or when you just need a second opinion. Discussion Mode gives you space to do that—with full awareness of your project—without jumping straight into code.

Sources that Discussion Mode uses are displayed at the top. You can click any of these to read the source material in more detail. At the bottom of the response are quick action buttons. For example, clicking “Open package.json” opens the respective file in the editor:

Since Discussion Mode has the entire context of your project, there are a wide range of use cases, such as:

  • Debugging assistance
  • Recommendations on tools, libraries and APIs
  • Product/project decision-making
  • Suggestions on how to improve design
  • Suggestions for new features
  • Understanding and integrating external APIs
  • Generating implementation plans for later execution
  • Use the Inspector tool to highlight a component within a page, and discuss potential changes

For example, if we ask how to add real-time data in Discussion Mode, Bolt provides us a plan:

Here, the quick action buttons give us the option to implement the plan:

Which will switch Bolt back to Build Mode to generate code.