4.3. Planning & Execution¶

When you submit a request to a squad, the planner agent creates a structured plan, you review and approve it, and the squad executes tasks in dependency-respecting waves.

Submitting a Request¶

Open your squad's monitoring dashboard and enter your request in the input field. Describe what you want to achieve in plain language:

"Build a REST API for user management with CRUD endpoints, input validation, and unit tests."

Optionally toggle Auto-approve if you trust the planner to create a good plan without manual review.

The Planning Phase¶

The planner agent receives your request and generates a plan containing:

• Title — A concise summary of the planned work
• Tasks — Individual units of work, each with:
  • Title and description
  • Assigned agent
  • Dependencies on other tasks
  • Priority level (low, medium, high, critical)

graph LR
    T1[Design API schema] --> T2[Implement endpoints]
    T1 --> T3[Write validation]
    T2 --> T4[Write unit tests]
    T3 --> T4
    T4 --> T5[Code review]

Approving a Plan¶

Unless auto-approve is enabled, the plan is presented for your review in the Plan Approval dialog. You can see:

• The full list of tasks with descriptions
• Agent assignments
• The dependency graph
• Estimated complexity

Click Approve to begin execution, or Reject to discard the plan and optionally provide feedback for the planner to try again.

Wave Execution¶

Once approved, tasks are organized into waves based on their dependencies:

gantt
    title Execution Waves
    dateFormat X
    axisFormat %s

    section Wave 1
    Design API schema     :0, 1
    section Wave 2
    Implement endpoints   :1, 2
    Write validation      :1, 2
    section Wave 3
    Write unit tests      :2, 3
    section Wave 4
    Code review           :3, 4

• Tasks within the same wave execute in parallel
• A wave starts only after all tasks in the previous wave have completed
• If a task fails, dependent tasks in later waves are automatically skipped

Execution Lifecycle¶

Monitoring Progress¶

The squad monitoring dashboard shows real-time execution progress:

• Current wave and total wave count
• Task counts — pending, running, completed, failed, skipped
• Per-agent status — which agent is active, idle, or in error state
• Token usage — real-time consumption per agent and total
• Activity feed — chronological log of events (agent started, task completed, memory updated, etc.)
• Live work summary ticker — a compact bar at the bottom of the chat area shows a continuously updated one-line summary of what the planner or active agents are working on. The ticker is visible during the planning and execution phases and can be dismissed with the × button.

Cancelling an Execution¶

Click Cancel at any time to stop the current execution. Running tasks are terminated, and pending tasks are marked as cancelled. Completed task results are preserved.

Agent Chat Sessions¶

You can also interact with individual agents directly through Agent Chat:

• Start a chat session with any agent in the squad
• Messages are streamed in real-time
• Conversations are persisted to the workspace
• Per-session token usage is tracked

This is useful for ad-hoc questions, debugging an agent's behavior, or providing additional context outside of the normal planning flow.