When I use fleet, I don't get to contribute to planning the way I do in plan mode — why?

[kumaakh]

In a normal coding-assistant session I can use plan mode (or an equivalent planner) and iterate on the approach before any code gets written. When I dispatch to fleet, that step seems to be gone — fleet just goes off and builds something. How am I supposed to shape the design?

[kumaakh]

Short version: Fleet assumes you've already done the high-level planning before you dispatch — that's the step plan mode covers in your local assistant. Fleet's planning phase is low-level (how to implement), not high-level (what to build). If you want that plan-mode-style back-and-forth on requirements, do it locally first and hand fleet the result.

There are two distinct planning phases, and they answer different questions:

Phase	Where it happens	Who drives it	Output	Question it answers
High-level design (HLD)	Local assistant session — typically in plan mode — before dispatching to fleet	You + the assistant, iteratively	requirements.md — screens, flows, behaviours, acceptance criteria	What are we building?
Low-level design (LLD)	Fleet's planning phase, on the member	Fleet member, working from requirements.md	Implementation plan — files to touch, functions, data structures, sequencing	How will we build it?

Why it feels like planning is missing:

• Fleet's planning phase is optimised for implementation tradeoffs (which library, which file, what order). It is a poor place to negotiate product decisions like "should this button be here at all" or "what should this screen actually do."
• If you skip HLD and jump straight to "fleet, build me X," fleet has to invent the requirements and the implementation. By the time you see the LLD plan, the product choices you'd want to push back on are already baked in.

What to do:

1. Use plan mode (or your assistant's equivalent) to iterate on a requirements.md — screens, layout intent, key interactions, acceptance criteria. This is where your feedback shapes the product.
2. Hand the finished requirements.md to fleet. Fleet's planning phase produces an implementation plan against it — review that for technical concerns.
3. If the implementation plan reveals something the requirements missed, update requirements.md and re-plan. Don't try to fix product gaps inside the LLD.