The four modes

Modes

The response mode decides which tools MaShop hands the model before your message leaves the browser.

It is not a change of tone. It is a change of catalogue.

What each mode offers the model

Mode	Tools handed over	What can happen
Ask	6, all read only	Reading and answering. Nothing is written.
Plan	7	The same six, plus writing one plan.
Build	29	Writing and deleting files, running a migration, installing a package, deploying, attaching a domain.
Agent	29	The same as Build, without handing control back at each step.

The six read tools are these. Read a file. List the files. Read your database schema. Query your analytics. Read a public web page. Ask you a question.

In the Automations thread, Build and Agent get a thirtieth tool that proposes an automation.

Ask and Plan cannot write, on two levels

The writing tools are not sent to the model at all. If it asks for one anyway, the server refuses to run it and says so in plain words.

The classification works by allow list. A tool MaShop does not recognise as reading is treated as writing and refused. That is deliberate: a tool added next month is refused by default rather than let through by oversight.

Ask and Plan are not Build with tools removed. Each carries its own full instructions and its own role. Ask answers as a technical adviser. Plan answers as an architect.

Build and Agent are the same catalogue

Agent adds one paragraph of instruction. Keep going to a verifiable result, and only ask about a fact it cannot check itself.

Nothing new is unlocked. The risk is identical to Build. MaShop never guesses Agent: it runs only when you choose it yourself.

Plan, then build

A plan arrives as a card with a button, not as text to scroll. Nothing has been built at that point.

Clicking the button sends a new message carrying the entire plan, framed by an instruction to apply it now. MaShop does this because the model does not remember the plan from one message to the next.

Read the plan before you click Build this plan. That click is a new billed message, and it writes to your project for real.

The badge is not a choice

Before you open the menu, the badge reads Build and sends nothing. The server then guesses your mode. A question goes to Ask. An explicit request for a plan goes to Plan. Everything else goes to Build.

Opening the menu and clicking Build is a real choice, and it travels with your message. Never opening it is not.

The mode sticks until you reload

Your choice holds for the whole page load. It survives a change of conversation, and it survives the switch to the Automations thread, where the selector is not even displayed.

So an Ask chosen in Code keeps you read only in Automations, with nothing on screen saying so. Reload the page to clear it.

Two things named Agent

Agent is a response mode. Automations is the other thread, next to Code. They are unrelated, and the mode selector only appears in the Code thread.

What the mode changes about cost

Nothing. Ask and Plan bill a turn like the rest. Accepting a plan bills a second one, and that message is long because it carries the plan.