You know the problem, but not yet which change you want to authorize. A useful assistant should help you work through the approach before doing the work—and keep the actual job visible when you are ready.
Mech's compact Plan control lets you make that distinction inside the conversation. Planning is a mode for subsequent requests, not text inserted into your draft and not an automatic repair.
Work out the approach without rewriting your request
Turn on Plan before sending the request you want to explore. Mech receives planning instructions as server-owned context for that run. Your draft stays as you wrote it; the control does not send a message by itself.
For example, ask for a proposed approach to an update failure: which evidence to collect, which narrow correction might be appropriate, how to preserve a way back and how to check the result. That is a fictional planning prompt, not proof a particular repair will work.
Changing the mode concerns subsequent requests. It does not reconfigure work already running. To move from a plan to execution, give the next request with the intended scope and authority. A plan is not permission to exceed device access or make unrelated changes.
Let authorized work finish without an arbitrary short cutoff
Some useful commands take longer than a quick exchange. Ordinary Mech device commands can continue until completion or cancellation, with elapsed running time visible, rather than stopping at the former arbitrary two-minute command ceiling. The former five-minute private-runner execution ceiling has also been removed.
That does not mean unlimited access. Real access expiry, revocation and explicit deadlines still apply. If an operation has an uncertain outcome, it must not simply be replayed as though nothing happened.
A running indicator is progress information, not proof of a successful repair. The result still needs checking.
Ask for a handback you can review
When you authorize the job, include the ending you need: what changed, how it was checked, where the backup or rollback information belongs, and what remains unresolved. A useful blocker can be a legitimate outcome; hiding one behind a confident summary is not.
Plan mode helps separate thinking through an approach from requesting its execution. Visible long-running work helps you follow the authorized job. Neither removes the technician's responsibility to set scope and review the result.
Use Mech in the browser. Your own external assistant can also operate OpalSpan Agent CLI with the same user permissions; it operates the CLI, not you. Windows and Linux are supported; macOS is a technical preview, in active development. The browser Plan control described here is not a claim of a newly published native CLI planning package.