Plan and Work modes

Tree's two-mode architecture. Plan is where you build the structure. Work is where you get through your day.

Plan and Work modes

Tree splits into two modes: Plan and Work. Plan is where you build the structure of your projects (trees, nodes, dependencies, scope). Work is where you act on that structure (your day, your week, capturing thoughts, tracking time). The same data underlies both modes; what changes is what the user is doing with it.

Why two modes

Project management software usually picks one job and does it. Linear is for executing work. Notion is for documenting it. Jira is for governing it. Each tool treats the rest of the work as somebody else's problem.

Tree's argument is that planning and executing are two halves of the same activity, separated by mode rather than separated by tool. The user shouldn't have to switch apps to go from "what does this project look like" to "what should I work on right now." Both questions are answered from the same data, just rendered differently.

The mode split also reflects how the work actually feels. Planning is slow, structural, sometimes contemplative. Execution is fast, sequential, often interrupted. The interfaces for those two states should be different even when the underlying data is the same.

What lives in Plan mode

Plan mode is where users build and edit the structure of their work:

  • Projects: the top-level containers
  • Trees: the dependency graphs within each project
  • Nodes: the individual pieces of work
  • Edges: the dependencies between nodes
  • Tree graph view: the visual canvas where structure is shaped
  • Tree list view: the same data, rendered as a list

The Plan dashboard is the entry point. Projects list, recent trees, and per-tree settings all live here.

What lives in Work mode

Work mode is where users act on the structure that Plan mode produced:

The Work dashboard is the entry point. From there, the user can move to any of the Work surfaces or jump directly to a specific tree.

How the modes connect

The two modes share the same underlying data. A node created in Plan mode appears in Work mode the moment it's relevant (due today, ready to start, etc.). A task completed in Work mode updates the graph in Plan mode immediately.

Users can switch between modes from any surface using a persistent top-level switcher. They can also bypass the mode split entirely and jump straight to a specific tree, which is the recommended path when the user already knows what they want to work on.

The promise that has to hold: the user can always go straight to the work without being forced through a dashboard. The mode split is structural, not procedural. It clarifies what kind of activity the user is in. It doesn't impose ceremony on getting things done.

Plan and Work are not separate apps

Some product tools split planning and execution into separate apps (Linear for execution, a separate roadmap tool for planning). Tree's argument is that this split is the problem, not the solution. The data has to be shared. The mental model has to be unified. Switching apps to "plan" versus "execute" is the cognitive overhead Tree is designed to remove.

Mode is a lens on the same data. App-switching is a context loss. The difference matters.

Tier availability

Both Plan and Work modes are part of the core Tree experience, available on Free, Paid, and Team. Specific surfaces within each mode may be Paid features (see Time overview for an example), but the mode architecture itself is core.

LAST UPDATED · 2026-06-02