QuireHow to find and read Claude Code, Cursor and Codex plan files
Short answer: Claude Code saves plans as Markdown files in ~/.claude/plans by default. Cursor saves plans in your home directory and can save them into the project with Save to workspace. Codex doesn’t document a plan file of its own; OpenAI suggests asking it to keep one, called PLANS.md, in the repository.
A plan is ordinary Markdown, so any Markdown viewer can show it formatted.
Updated 15 October 2026. Agent details follow Anthropic’s, Cursor’s and OpenAI’s documentation as of this date; these tools change quickly.
Where each agent keeps its plans
Claude Code
In plan mode Claude reads code and proposes a plan without editing files until you approve. Anthropic’s settings reference says plan files go to ~/.claude/plans unless you set plansDirectory, a path relative to the project root such as "./plans". Claude Code falls back to the default if the path points outside the project. Pressing Ctrl+G at the approval prompt opens the plan in your text editor so you can change it, as the permission modes page describes.
Cursor
Press Shift+Tab in the chat input to switch to Plan Mode. Cursor’s documentation says plans are saved in your home directory by default, and Save to workspace moves one into the project so it can be shared and kept.
Codex
We found no documented plan file that Codex writes by default. OpenAI’s cookbook article “Using PLANS.md for multi-hour problem solving” describes a convention instead: an AGENTS.md rule tells Codex to write an “ExecPlan” following a PLANS.md template and keep it up to date as it works. That plan is a Markdown file in your repository.
Read a plan in Chrome
Long plans are easier to judge formatted: headings become a table of contents, checklists become ticks, and code samples are highlighted.
- Make a plan
In Claude Code, press Shift+Tab until the status bar shows plan mode, or start with
claude --permission-mode plan, then describe the change. - Find the file
Plans are written to
~/.claude/plansunless you setplansDirectory. The newest file there is the current plan. - Open it in a viewer
In Quire Markdown, choose Open file. On a Mac, press ⇧⌘G in the file dialog and type
~/.claude/plansto reach the hidden folder. - Follow it
Turn on Follow file. If the agent revises the plan, the page updates while the tab is visible.
On Windows the default folder is .claude\plans inside your user folder. File dialogs hide folders whose names start with a dot; on a Mac, ⇧⌘G (“Go to Folder”) lets you type the path.
Why use a viewer for this
Quire Markdown is our extension, free on the Chrome Web Store. It was built for README files, notes and coding-agent plans.
- It can’t change the plan. It is a viewer only, so you won’t edit a file the agent is still using by mistake.
- Outline and find. Jump between phases of a long plan, or search for a file name.
- Follow file. Checks the file you opened every two seconds while the tab is visible. Dropped files are snapshots and don’t update, and following stops if you close or reload the viewer.
- Private. No account, no upload to us. Up to ten recent documents are kept in your Chrome profile, and you can remove them one by one.
Limits: UTF-8 files up to 2 MB; images appear as blocked references; Mermaid diagrams and math are shown as source, not drawn.
Questions
Can I keep Claude Code plans in my repository?
Yes. Set "plansDirectory": "./plans" in .claude/settings.json. Use forward slashes; Anthropic notes that a backslash path makes Claude Code fall back to ~/.claude/plans on macOS, Linux and WSL.
Do old plans pile up?
They are files on your disk, so they stay until you delete them. Each Claude Code plan has its own file name, so the newest file is usually the one you want.