Plan before building with Plan or Discussion Mode

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Overview

Each agent in Bolt has its own chat mode where you can plan and ask questions without making changes to your code. With Bolt Agent, this is called Plan Mode, and with the v1 Agent (legacy), it’s called Discussion Mode. Both modes provide project-specific help, drawing on Bolt’s documentation and other online sources when needed. Using Plan or Discussion Mode lets you explore ideas safely, save tokens by avoiding unnecessary code exchanges, and ensure you get things right before moving into Build Mode.

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Features

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Project context awareness

Every discussion message includes your project codebase for context-aware responses, as well as the most recent messages. Because Plan and Discussion Modes have the entire context of your projects, there is a wide range of use cases, including:

• 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

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Web research

When Bolt answers a question, it can pull in real-time, up-to-date information from trusted web sources 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 This helps ensure the answers are accurate, relevant, and not outdated.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, Bolt displays the sources at the top of the response. For example:

• If you ask about the latest Stripe API updates, Bolt 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.

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Quick action buttons

If your question or prompt has an intuitive action associated with it, Bolt will likely generate quick action buttons at the end of its response. With these buttons, you can take immediate actions such as:

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

The quick action buttons are contextual and will vary depending on your project and the topic of discussion.

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How to use Plan Mode

Plan Mode is available when you’re using Bolt Agent. It helps you map out steps, reason through complex problems, and build strategies. While its main strength is structured planning, it can also search the web or explore your codebase if needed.

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Use Plan Mode on the Bolt homepage

You can begin your Bolt project in Plan Mode right from the first prompt. This lets you create and refine a plan through back-and-forth discussion before executing a build, helping you avoid unwanted changes and use fewer tokens overall. Simply click Plan before submitting your prompt to generate a plan for your build. Plan Mode highlights blue when active. Click it again to turn it off and return to Build mode.

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Use Plan Mode in a project

1. Open your project working.
2. In the bottom-right corner of the chatbox, click Plan.
3. Enter your question or prompt, and read the response. You can then either:
   • Continue the discussion.
   • Use one of the quick action buttons to implement the suggestion.

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How to use Discussion Mode

Discussion Mode appears when you are using the v1 Agent (legacy). It lets you explore ideas by chatting with Bolt without making changes to your code. Powered by Google Gemini, it is versatile and works well for a wide range of topics. You can use it any time you want to brainstorm or think through ideas. Follow the steps below to use Discussion Mode in a Bolt project:

1. Open a project working with the v1 Agent (legacy).
2. In the bottom-right corner of the chatbox, click Discuss.
3. Enter your question or prompt, and read the response. You can then either:
   • Continue the discussion.
   • Use one of the quick action buttons to implement the suggestion.