IDE plan mode acts as agent mode - cannot access "create_plan tool"

How To
1

Error/Behaviour

Plan mode acts as if in agent mode (also see last paragraph of the following AI self explanation.)

Explanation by Cursor/Claude 4.5

I’m in plan mode (the system reminder confirms it), but when I try to use create_plan, I get an error saying “Tool create_plan not found.”

Looking at my available tools list from earlier errors:

Available tools: [“codebase_search”,“run_terminal_cmd”,“grep”,“delete_file”,“web_search”,“update_memory”,“read_lints”,“edit_notebook”,“todo_write”,“search_replace”,“write”,“read_file”,“list_dir”,“glob_file_search”,…]

The create_plan tool is not in the list. This could mean:

  1. The tool was removed/disabled in this session
  2. Plan mode has different tool access than I expect
  3. The tool only appears in certain contexts (like at the start of a conversation)
  4. There’s a bug in the tool availability

But I do have access to:

  • todo_write - for managing todos
  • search_replace, write - for editing files
  • run_terminal_cmd - for executing commands

So I can still execute plans, I just can’t create new plan documents. I’ve been using todo_write to track progress instead.

Does this matter for your work? I can still execute tasks - I just can’t create formal plan documents.

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