Plans & Approval Workflows

This guide walks you through reviewing and approving plans — structured proposals your agent creates before tackling complex work.

When you ask for something with multiple steps — research, analysis, building several artifacts — the agent proposes a plan first. You review it, adjust anything that's off, and give the green light before work begins.

Prerequisites: Access to a project with an active thread. Plans appear in chat — nothing to configure.

When the agent proposes a plan

The agent creates a plan when the work is complex enough that starting without alignment would be risky — multi-step analysis, research across sources, building multiple artifacts. You don't request a plan. The agent decides when one is warranted. Simple requests just happen.

What a plan looks like

A plan appears as an interactive card in chat with:

• Title and objective — What the work is and what it accomplishes.
• Approach and assumptions — The strategy and what the agent is taking for granted. Your chance to correct course early.
• Objectives — Ordered milestones, each with optional sub-objectives that break down the work further.
• Permission gates — Actions that might need your sign-off, like sending messages or calling external APIs.

Approving a plan

Click Approve at the bottom of the plan card. Before you do, configure two things.

Objective gates

Each objective has a gate control:

• Don't stop — The agent works through without checking in (default).
• Stop before — The agent pauses before starting this objective.
• Stop after — The agent completes the objective, then pauses so you can review.

Mix and match. Let data gathering run freely, but require a check-in before the final report.

Permission gates

Each permission gate has three settings:

• Allow — The agent performs this action without asking.
• Review — The agent asks for approval first.
• Block — The agent skips this action entirely.

Once configured, click Approve and the agent starts immediately.

Modifying or redirecting a plan

If the plan is close but not right, type feedback instead of approving:

Skip the competitive analysis — focus on internal data only. Add a step to export results as CSV.

The agent revises and presents an updated card. Go back and forth until it's right — work doesn't start until you approve.

If the plan misses entirely, just say what you actually need. The agent adjusts — simpler plan, or no plan at all if the request is straightforward enough.

After approval

The agent works through objectives in order, pausing at any gates you set to Stop before or Stop after. For larger plans, it may delegate objectives to sub-threads — separate conversations handling parts of the work in parallel. Results flow back to the main thread automatically.

Next steps

• Creating Tasks — Save a workflow as a reusable task that runs on demand or on a schedule.
• Thread Objectives & Orchestration — How agents coordinate sub-threads for parallel work.
• Key Concepts — Threads, artifacts, workbooks, and other building blocks.