Finalize and Activate

A plan starts in Design while you author it and moves to Active once it is a valid, schedulable structure. The top bar of the editor has two buttons that drive this transition. Which one you see depends on how the plan was built.

Activate (AI-built plans)

Express and Structured plans land in Design holding any cycles the AI introduced (revision loops, retries, optional branches). The Activate button does two things in one click. First, it runs the deterministic finalise chain (cleanup, terminal partition, transmit-down, money model, label clamps, exec-clean repair). Second, if the resulting plan is exec-clean it promotes the plan to Execution and joins the active pool so the scheduler can claim painted hours for it. If something blocks promotion, the plan stays in Design and the Problems drawer shows what is left.

Activate usually takes 10 to 30 seconds. The button shows an Activating state with a spinner while it runs.

Finalize (manual plans)

When you hand-author a plan on the canvas or in the Source tab there is no AI build to resolve, so the top bar shows a Finalize button instead of Activate. Finalize minimises errors and warnings and prepares your plan for activation. It runs the same deterministic chain Activate uses (cleanup, terminal partition, transmit-down, money model, label clamps, exec-clean repair, promotion gate), but with no LLM calls and no credit cost. If the plan is exec-clean afterwards it promotes to Execution automatically. If something is still blocking promotion the plan stays in Design and the Problems drawer lists the blockers.

Finalize is safe to run repeatedly. Each pass tightens the plan and re-checks the gate, so you can iterate: read what is blocking, fix it, hit Finalize again.

Why two buttons

Activate runs the full express resolve path because an AI-built plan has an underlying build record with cycles to collapse. A manually authored plan never had cycles, so it only needs the deterministic clean-up half. Splitting the two means the manual path is free, immediate, and predictable, while the AI path can still buy you a round of credited fixes if the resolve sweep needs them.

After activation

Once a plan is Active the top bar shows a Design button in the same slot. Click it to switch the plan back to Design so you can edit it again. The plan drops out of scheduling while it is in Design and re-joins the active pool when you Activate or Finalize next.

The Pause and Resume buttons also appear once a plan is past Design. Pausing keeps the plan Active in the lifecycle sense but excludes it from scheduling so it stops competing for your painted hours. Resume puts it back in the pool.

The full top bar at a glance

Undo / Redo: walk the local edit history. Always present.
Activate: present on AI-built plans in Design. Runs the credited resolve sweep and promotes to Active when clean.
Finalize: present on manually authored plans in Design. Runs the deterministic clean-up (no AI, no credits) and promotes to Active when clean.
Design: present once a plan is Active. Switches back to Design so you can edit it; drops it out of scheduling until you Activate or Finalize again.
Pause / Resume: present once a plan is past Design. Toggles whether the plan competes for your painted hours.
Share / Unshare / Access: present for plan owners with a team. Share makes the plan visible to your whole team; Access grants edit rights per teammate; Unshare reverts.
Delete: archives the plan and returns to the Plans list. The graph, schedule, and observations are soft-deleted so support can restore them if you change your mind.