<modes inital="plan" title="I like to work in two modes Plan and Act">
<plan start="true" name="Plan" read="true" write="false" keyword="plan">
<rule>Focus on information gathering, asking questions, and architecting a solution, output a comprehensive plan.</rule>
<rule>Continue to ask questions and investigate until we reach {confidenceRequired}.</rule>
<rule>Track the the current confidence percentage.</rule>
<rule>You must include "Would you like to implement the plan now?" at the end of of the response once we hit {confidenceRequired}.</rule>
<rule>You must never move to act mode until the conditions are fully met</rule>
<rule>You must use simple future tense when creating a plan "I will".</rule>
</plan>
<act name="Act" read="true" write="true" keyword="act" confidenceRequired="100">
<conditions>
<condition>Confidence has reached {confidenceRequired}</condition>
<condition>User provides explicit approval (Yes/Act)</condition>
</conditions>
<rule>If I ask a question while in act mode switch back to plan mode.</rule>
</act>
</modes>
I read that Claude was optimised for XML prompts and it seems more effective.
Learnings
Confidence percentage and requirement (Forces agentic iteration on the problem)
Explicit approval (Confidence and Keyword)
“simple future tense” ensures the plan is not interpretation as approval
How I’m using it
I’m now storing this prompt in a Notepad (Beta feature) and only including it when I want to do planning. This means Chat and other interactions are not polluted by the planning rules. My “Rules for AI” are just one line, I use the cursor rules folder and Notepads for pretty much everything. If the AI forgets the plan mode or I want to start the process again I include the Notepad again.
I have seen overall better results with Plan vs Act compared to some more common (human) development approaches as its better aligned with the process of AI
type or paste code here
[quote="DaleLJefferson, post:1, topic:50996, full:true"]
I've been using my [Plan vs Act mode](https://forum.cursor.com/t/plan-vs-act-modes/43550) prompt for the last couple of weeks and I thought now would be a good time to share the current version.
**What is looks like in action**
**20%**
**80%**
*100%*
**Show me the code**
```xml
<modes inital="plan" title="I like to work in two modes Plan and Act">
<plan start="true" name="Plan" read="true" write="false" keyword="plan">
<rule>Focus on information gathering, asking questions, and architecting a solution, output a comprehensive plan.</rule>
<rule>Continue to ask questions and investigate until we reach {confidenceRequired}.</rule>
<rule>Track the the current confidence percentage.</rule>
<rule>You must include "Would you like to implement the plan now?" at the end of of the response once we hit {confidenceRequired}.</rule>
<rule>You must never move to act mode until the conditions are fully met</rule>
<rule>You must use simple future tense when creating a plan "I will".</rule>
</plan>
<act name="Act" read="true" write="true" keyword="act" confidenceRequired="100">
<conditions>
<condition>Confidence has reached {confidenceRequired}</condition>
<condition>User provides explicit approval (Yes/Act)</condition>
</conditions>
<rule>If I ask a question while in act mode switch back to plan mode.</rule>
</act>
</modes>
I read that Claude was optimised for XML prompts and it seems more effective.
Learnings
Confidence percentage and requirement (Forces agentic iteration on the problem)
Explicit approval (Confidence and Keyword)
“simple future tense” ensures the plan is not interpretation as approval
How I’m using it
I’m now storing this prompt in a Notepad (Beta feature) and only including it when I want to do planning. This means Chat and other interactions are not polluted by the planning rules. My “Rules for AI” are just one line, I use the cursor rules folder and Notepads for pretty much everything. If the AI forgets the plan mode or I want to start the process again I include the Notepad again.
