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Planning

What It Is

Planning is a pattern where an agent decomposes a complex goal into a sequence of smaller, manageable steps — then executes them in order. Instead of attempting to solve a problem in a single response, the agent first creates a plan, then follows it step by step, adapting as needed based on intermediate results.

This is what separates an agent from a simple chatbot. A chatbot responds to a single prompt. An agent with planning capability can take a high-level objective ("process this customer's exchange") and autonomously determine the sequence of actions required to achieve it.

Why It Matters

Real-world tasks are rarely single-step. Processing an exchange requires verifying the order, checking return eligibility, confirming inventory, processing payment, and sending confirmation. A planning agent handles this entire workflow without requiring the user to specify each step.

Andrew Ng has noted that planning is the least mature of the four core agentic patterns — it works well for well-defined workflows but remains challenging for open-ended, ambiguous goals. This makes it both the most powerful pattern (when it works) and the one that most benefits from guardrails and human oversight.

How It Works

┌──────────┐     ┌──────────────┐     ┌──────────────┐
│  Goal     │────▸│  Plan         │────▸│  Execute      │
│  (input)  │     │  (decompose)  │     │  (step by    │
│           │     │               │     │   step)       │
└──────────┘     └──────────────┘     └──────┬───────┘
                                             │
                                      Replan if needed
  1. Receive goal — The agent receives a high-level objective.
  2. Decompose — The agent breaks the goal into an ordered sequence of sub-tasks.
  3. Execute — The agent works through each sub-task, using tool calls and reflection as needed.
  4. Monitor — After each step, the agent checks whether the result changes the remaining plan.
  5. Replan — If a step fails or produces unexpected results, the agent revises the remaining plan rather than blindly continuing.

Advanced planning approaches include:

  • Chain-of-thought planning — The agent reasons through the plan in natural language before executing.
  • Tree-of-thought — The agent explores multiple possible plans and selects the best one (Yao et al. 2023).
  • Hierarchical planning — High-level plans are broken into sub-plans, each with their own steps.

Example

Customer exchange scenario

Goal: "Process customer Jane Smith's exchange — return Blue Widget, ship Red Widget."

Agent's plan:

  1. Look up Jane Smith's order history → find order #ORD-5678
  2. Verify return eligibility → check if Blue Widget is within the 30-day return window
  3. Check Red Widget inventory → confirm availability in the nearest warehouse
  4. Calculate price difference → Blue Widget was $29.99, Red Widget is $34.99, difference is $5.00
  5. Process return for Blue Widget → generate prepaid return label
  6. Charge $5.00 price difference → process payment
  7. Place order for Red Widget → create new shipment
  8. Send confirmation email → include return label, new order details, and timeline

Replanning example: At step 3, the Red Widget is out of stock. The agent replans: offer the customer the Green Widget as an alternative, or place the Red Widget on backorder with an estimated date.

Research task

Goal: "Write a competitive analysis of our top 3 competitors."

Agent's plan:

  1. Identify the top 3 competitors from the company's CRM data
  2. For each competitor, gather recent news, product launches, and pricing
  3. Analyze strengths and weaknesses relative to our product
  4. Draft a comparison table
  5. Write executive summary with recommendations
  6. Review and refine the full document

When to Use It

  • Multi-step workflows with dependencies between steps (step 3 depends on step 2's output)
  • Tasks where the sequence of actions matters
  • Goals that are too complex to accomplish in a single tool call
  • Workflows where failure at one step should change the approach for subsequent steps

Further Reading