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Claude Code Course

Plan Mode Trial Run

Arun Nagarathanam · 31 Aug 2026 Prompt · 43 of 72 in this course

An exclusive resource for students of Arun's Claude Code Course.

Switch to plan mode before you send this. In plan mode Claude reads your files and runs commands to look around, and it writes you a plan, and it does not touch your source. There is nothing to undo, because nothing was done.

Plan a small change for me. Give the project cards a gentle lift when the mouse hovers over them. Just the plan for now, no edits.

What to look for in the plan

Read it step by step, asking of each one whether you would have done that. Not whether it sounds clever. Whether every step in it is a step you would have taken.

Whatever you want different, say it now, while the whole thing is still a paragraph of text. That correction costs you a sentence. Catching the same thing after the code existed would have cost you a review, an explanation and a second run.

If you would rather edit the plan directly, Ctrl and G together opens it in your own text editor before Claude goes anywhere with it.

The wording to recognise when the plan is ready

Claude does not simply start building. It asks how you want the build to run, and the choices are the same modes you already learned, so read the option before you approve it.

The option that hands the work over reads Accept and auto mode, and it sits to the right of the plain Accept. When auto mode is not available to you, that same option offers auto-accept edits instead, and pressing it does the same job. Whichever one you press moves the entire session into the mode that option named, which is what makes this the handover rather than just an approval.

If auto is missing from your list, that is the model and not your subscription. Auto needs a recent model, so open the model list and move up.

Read this before you walk away

A separate check looks at every action before it runs. Anything that goes further than what you asked for gets blocked, and so does anything aimed at infrastructure it does not recognise, and anything that looks like it came from something Claude read rather than from you. That same check blocks anything trying to delete the root of your filesystem or your home folder. Its blocked-by-default list is longer than that, and three entries are worth hearing: it will not download code and run it in the same breath, it will not deploy to production, and it will not force a push over shared history.

Any ask rule you wrote still stops it too, because auto does not overrule your own file.

Take the documented wording exactly at face value. Auto mode reduces permission prompts, and it does not guarantee safety. Use it where you trust the general direction, and not as a replacement for reviewing something sensitive.

The condition over all of it

This works on work you can put back. Under version control, with nothing in it that deploys, sends, or reaches a machine that is not yours. Run plan and auto over a deployment and the undo you were relying on is not there.


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