Ask, Craft or Plan: Choosing the Right CodeBuddy Mode

Three modes, one question: how far should the change reach

Ask leaves your code alone, Craft edits within the current context, and Plan drafts a plan first and then works across files. Picking the wrong mode has a direct cost: Plan on a small task wastes time, and Craft on a large task tends to leave the codebase in pieces.

Ask: you want answers, not edits

• You can't follow a block of code and want to know what it actually does.
• You hit an error and want to understand the cause before deciding how to fix it.
• You're torn between two approaches and need help weighing the trade-offs.
• You want logs, configuration, a design file, or a third-party library explained.

The value of Ask is that it carries zero risk: the answer stays in the conversation and never lands in your files.

Craft: fast generation and local edits in the current context

Typical jobs are adding parameter validation to this function, rewriting this loop in a clearer form, or writing another variant of an existing component. Craft is fast, but it leans heavily on the context you hand it, so pointing at files with @ is far more reliable than letting it search. Keep the blast radius to one file or one component at a time.

Plan: a checklist first for cross-file work

Use Plan when a request spans multiple files or modules, or when even you can't say which places need to change. It produces a task list first; once you confirm or adjust that list, it executes against it on its own.

• Adding a complete feature, from the frontend through to the API call.
• Restructuring directories or standardizing a pattern across the codebase.
• Moving a page from static data to a real endpoint.

Don't skip the checklist step. It is what defines the boundary of everything that follows.

NES next-edit suggestions: change one place, get pointed to the next

NES (Next Edit Suggestions), introduced with Code Completions Pro, is forward-looking editing: when you change a function signature, it flags the call sites and type definitions that need to follow, and it is enabled by default. Trigger it manually with Ctrl+Shift+Enter. The difference from ordinary completion is the question it asks. Ordinary completion guesses what belongs on the next line; NES guesses what should be edited next.

How to pick the right mode quickly

• You only want a conclusion, no changes: Ask.
• The change is confined to one file and you know exactly where: Craft.
• Several places need changes with dependencies between them: Plan.
• It's a repetitive adjustment, like a rename or a new field: use NES directly, it's faster than opening a conversation.

Using them as a set

Start with Ask to settle the approach, move to Plan to break the work into tasks, drop back to Craft for the small local edits in between, and leave repetitive changes to NES. This combination is far steadier than throwing everything at a single mode, and it keeps the scope of each change under control.

Getting started

Take a small requirement you already know well and run it once through each of the three modes; the difference will be obvious the first time. For more hands-on walkthroughs, see the tutorials, and for tool comparisons, the tool library. This article reflects the state as of 2026-11; mode names and shortcuts follow the official documentation.