# Introducing Plan Mode: Review the Agent's Plan Before It Runs Plan Mode lets the Searchable Agent map out a multi-step job as a reviewable plan card first. You see the title and ordered steps, approve them, and then the Agent executes — so it never runs off in the wrong direction. **Published:** July 22, 2026 **Author:** Sam Hogan --- # Introducing Plan Mode: Review the Agent's Plan Before It Runs The Searchable Agent can take on a lot in a single request. It can audit your AI visibility, investigate competitors, build a reporting process, turn a pile of Search Console data into a roadmap, and work across your Searchable data in ways that used to take a team hours. But the more capable the Agent became, the clearer one problem got: for anything genuinely multi-step, you do not actually want it to start immediately. You want to see how it intends to approach the work before it spends the tool calls, pulls the data, and commits to a direction. An agent that jumps straight into a big job and gets the approach subtly wrong does not save you time. It costs you a redo — and a little bit of trust each time. Plan Mode fixes that. Before the Agent runs off, it builds a reviewable plan you can actually read and approve. --- ## What is Plan Mode? Plan Mode is a way to make the Searchable Agent plan before it acts. Instead of diving straight into a multi-step task, the Agent pauses and returns a **plan card**: a clear title and an ordered list of the steps it intends to take. You read it, adjust anything you want, and approve it. Only then does the Agent execute. There are three ways to reach it: * Type `/plan` in the Agent * Pick **Plan** from the `/` command menu * Ask for it in plain language — "map out…", "put together a plan for…", "plan how we should…" If something is genuinely ambiguous, the Agent asks **one sharp clarifying question** before it writes the plan — not a wall of follow-ups. The point is an interactive pause, not an interrogation. You answer, you get the plan card, you approve, and the work begins. It is worth being precise about what this is: Plan Mode is about planning *work*, the ordered steps the Agent will carry out. It has nothing to do with billing or subscription plans. --- ## What Can Plan Mode Do for You? The most useful place for Plan Mode is exactly where a wrong first move is most expensive — the multi-step programs that make up real AI search and SEO work. For example, you could use Plan Mode to: ### Build a comparison-page program against your competitors Ask the Agent to plan a set of comparison and alternative pages targeting the competitors you keep losing citations to. It maps out which competitors to cover, the angle for each page, and the order to build them — so you can approve the program before a single page is researched. ### Put together an AI visibility roadmap "Plan how we should improve our visibility in ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews over the next quarter." The Agent lays out the audit, the priorities, and the sequence of work as ordered steps you can sign off on, rather than guessing where to start. ### Design a content calendar or launch program Turn a vague "we need more content" into a concrete, ordered plan — topics, cadence, and the research each piece needs — that you can review and adjust before the Agent starts producing anything. ### Set up a repeatable reporting process Plan your monthly visibility review once: which platforms to check, which competitors to track, how the output should be structured. Approve the plan, and you have a process you can run again and again. ### Scope a multi-step audit before the Agent burns tool calls For any deep investigation — why a page lost visibility, where a competitor is quietly gaining share — Plan Mode lets you see and shape the approach up front, so the Agent spends its work on the right questions instead of the wrong ones. Plan Mode also pairs naturally with the rest of the Agent. Once you have a plan you like, you can save the workflow as a [Skill](https://www.searchable.com/blog/introducing-agent-skills) and rerun it, and when the Agent executes, it can answer with [live charts and tables](https://www.searchable.com/blog/introducing-agent-data-visualization) right in the conversation. --- ## Why I Made Plan Mode Agents that jump straight into the work waste two things: credits and trust. Watching how people used the Searchable Agent for bigger jobs, the pattern was consistent. The single-shot questions were fine. But the moment someone asked for something multi-step — a competitor program, a quarter's worth of visibility work, a reporting process — the risk was not that the Agent *couldn't* do it. It was that it would confidently do it the wrong way, and you would not find out until the work was already done. AI search work is inherently multi-step, and the approach matters as much as the execution. You want the plan locked before anything runs. A senior teammate does not sprint off the moment you describe a project — they say "here's how I'd tackle this, sound right?" first. That short pause is exactly what separates a trusted colleague from a runaway autocomplete. Plan Mode makes the Agent behave like the former. It turns a big, open-ended request into a plan you can see, question, and own — and it makes the Agent something you can hand real, consequential work to, not just quick questions. --- ## How to Get Started Plan Mode is live in the Searchable Agent today. The easiest way to try it is on a job you would normally hesitate to hand off in one go. Open the Agent and type `/plan`, choose **Plan** from the `/` menu, or simply ask it to "map out" or "put together a plan for" the work. Answer the one clarifying question if it asks, review the plan card, tweak any steps you want, and approve it. The Agent takes it from there. Start with something real — a comparison-page program for your top competitors, or a plan to improve your visibility in ChatGPT and AI Overviews. See the plan first, then let it run. [**Try Plan Mode in the Searchable Agent →**](https://app.searchable.com/agent)