Editing Project Plans with Sammy
Once Sammy has generated a project plan for your estimate, you can ask him to tweak it from the same chat panel you use to adjust the estimate itself. No more bouncing between tabs to change a date or worker count — describe the change in plain English and Sammy will apply it, recompute downstream task dates, and tell you what moved.
What you can ask Sammy to change
Sammy can edit any of these on the plan:
- Task dates — "push framing back two days", "start excavation on Tuesday the 3rd"
- Worker counts — "double the workers on plumbing", "put one extra carpenter on the framing crew"
- Predecessors — "make tiling depend on waterproofing", "remove the dependency between rough-in and framing"
- Task names — "rename 'Framing' to 'Wall framing'"
- Notes on a task — "add a note on the slab pour that it needs an early-morning start"
- Inspection markers — "mark the surveyor visit as an inspection", "this isn't really an inspection, remove the badge"
- Adding new tasks — "add a final site clean-up after painting"
- Removing tasks — "drop the temporary site fence task"
- Reordering the whole plan — "swap framing and excavation"
- Plan-level settings — "rename the plan to 'Smith Kitchen Reno Schedule'", "shift the whole plan to start on June 3rd", "set the workday to 6 hours instead of 7"
How dates flow downstream
When you change one task, the rest of the plan moves with it. If you push framing back by two days, Sammy automatically pushes everything that depends on framing by two days too. He'll tell you what moved in his reply, so you don't have to chase the cascade through the Gantt yourself.
Asking about the plan, not just changing it
You can ask Sammy questions about the plan from chat as well:
- "Why did you put waterproofing before tiling?"
- "How long is the whole job?"
- "When does the second inspection happen?"
He'll answer using the actual plan and the reasoning he captured when he generated it. No mutation tools fire for questions like these — your plan stays exactly as it is.
Mixing plan and estimate changes in one message
You can change the estimate and the plan in a single message. Sammy will fire both edits in the same turn:
- "Push framing back two days and bump the structural timber rate to $4,500."
- "Add a final site clean-up task and add a $200 line item for skip removal."
The chat reply summarises both effects together.
Locking a task to protect it
When you manually edit a task in the Gantt — by dragging the task bar, changing the worker count in the task dialog, or saving notes on a task — Sammy automatically locks that task. A small 🔒 appears next to its name on the Gantt.
Locked tasks are protected from chat edits. If you ask Sammy to "push framing back two days" and the framing task is locked, he'll tell you it's locked and ask if you want to unlock it before retrying.
To unlock a task, click it on the Gantt to open the task dialog and toggle off Lock this task.
Why lock? It's the safest way to say "I've made up my mind about this one — don't move it." When you regenerate the plan later (or ask Sammy to do something that would have moved this task), the lock keeps your manual choice intact.
Things to know
- Cascade does the maths for you — you never need to work out the new downstream dates yourself.
- Sammy reads the locked state before trying to change anything — he won't blindly retry against a locked task.
- Weekends are skipped automatically — Sammy plans around weekends but doesn't yet know about public holidays (you can adjust those manually for now).
- Edits are saved as you go — no save button needed; once Sammy reports the change, it's persisted.
Things you can't ask Sammy to do from chat yet
A few plan actions still need the buttons in the Project Plan tab:
- Generating a brand-new plan — use the "Generate Project Plan" button on the empty state.
- Regenerating the plan — use the Regenerate button at the top of the Plan tab.
- Deleting the plan — use the Delete button at the top of the Plan tab.
- Locking or unlocking from chat — use the lock toggle inside each task's dialog.
These will come to chat in a follow-up release.
Tips
- Be specific — "make the second waterproofing inspection one day later" beats "delay the inspection".
- Pair plan and estimate edits when it makes sense — Sammy can do them in one go.
- Trust the cascade summary — if Sammy says he shifted four downstream tasks, he did; you don't need to re-check each one manually.
- Unlock before bulk edits — if you want Sammy to restructure a chunk of the plan, unlock the relevant tasks first.