> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.hazel.ai/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# What is the Financial Planning Agent?

> Hazel reads what your firm already holds on a household, runs the math, and gives you a financial plan you can change by asking.

You have a household to sit down with, and most of the planning work is pulling together what your firm already knows about them. Hazel reads the household's statements, tax returns and meeting history, works out what this household's situation calls for, runs the math, and lays out a plan you can present. Ask for the plan to say something different and Hazel writes a new version.

## What you get

A plan opens on **Summary**, and the left rail runs through **Today**, **Goals**, **Getting there** and **Decisions**, with an **Appendix** at the foot. **Getting there** holds tabs and opens on **Your priorities**, where Hazel ranks what this household should deal with first. The rest are the topics your firm's template calls for: out of the box, **Cash flow**, **Retirement** and **Insurance**.

<CardGroup cols="2">
  <Card title="Built from your data" icon="database">
    Accounts and holdings, tax filings, documents you upload, meetings and transcripts, emails and notes. It all reaches Hazel that way, so connecting a CRM or a custodian does not by itself put a balance in front of Hazel.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Sourced, figure by figure" icon="link">
    Sourced figures carry a dotted underline. Select one and Hazel shows where the number came from, the assumptions behind it, and any arithmetic.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Interactive" icon="sliders">
    Plans carry **levers**: dials such as a retirement age or a savings rate. Move one and the numbers rework on screen while the client watches. The change is exploratory, so it doesn't save. To keep it, ask Hazel.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Set up by your firm" icon="building">
    Your firm owner sets the guidelines once: which sections a plan contains, the **Hazel instructions** that steer how it reads, the assumptions to plan against, and the **Guardrails** no plan is allowed to cross.
  </Card>
</CardGroup>

For now a plan belongs to whoever built it, so a colleague with full access to the household cannot open yours. See [Access and availability](/guides/financial-planning/overview/access-and-availability).

## How Hazel decides what goes in a plan

Hazel composes each plan around the household's facts, so a household with a large concentration of company stock can get a section about that stock, and two households at the same firm can end up with different sections. Your firm's guidelines and templates are a starting point, and a firm that wants every plan built to the same template can say so, in [Strictness](/guides/financial-planning/settings/personas/strictness).

You can talk to a plan, too. "Add a lever for retiring at 62." Each request comes back as a new version, and the earlier versions remain accessible.

## How it works

<Steps>
  <Step title="You point Hazel at a household">
    Open the household's **Financial Planning** tab, use the **Financial Planning** page, or ask in **Ask Hazel** with the chat in **Financial Planning mode**.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Hazel gathers and reasons">
    Hazel reads the household's client profile, its documents and its meeting history, then matches the household to the closest of your firm's **Client personas**, which informs which sections are in the plan, how it reads, and some of its starting assumptions. See [Client personas](/guides/financial-planning/settings/personas/overview).
  </Step>

  <Step title="Hazel runs the math and writes the plan">
    The numbers come out of a library of planning calculations, run with your firm's **Solver assumptions** and **Market assumptions**.
  </Step>

  <Step title="You review, tune and present">
    Open **Plan orientation**, the info button at the top of the plan, for what this plan concludes and why. Check a few figures against their sources, move a lever, edit any sentence in place. Asking Hazel for a change takes the plan's conversation: the **Edit** button in the chat view, **Open chat** on the household's Financial Planning tab. Then download the saved plan as a PDF for the meeting.
  </Step>
</Steps>

<Note>
  Every figure comes either from something Hazel read or from an assumption, and the plan labels which, so read the figures resting on an assumption before you present. Where something material is missing, Hazel asks before drafting: on the household's **Financial Planning** tab, a question you don't answer becomes a reasonable assumption and the plan proceeds. A build you started in a chat pauses until you answer.
</Note>

## Where to go next

* [Getting started](/guides/financial-planning/overview/getting-started): the entry points, the data you need, and what a build looks like from the inside.
* [Front-loading the brief](/guides/financial-planning/your-data/front-loading-the-brief): say what you want before Hazel starts.
* [Anatomy of a plan](/guides/financial-planning/the-plan/anatomy-of-a-plan)
* [Settings](/guides/financial-planning/settings/overview): plan templates, Client personas, Plan design and assumptions.
* [Planning philosophy](/guides/financial-planning/overview/planning-philosophy)
* [What it can and cannot do](/guides/financial-planning/overview/what-it-can-and-cant-do): where your sign-off is needed.

New to planning software? The [Glossary](/guides/financial-planning/glossary) gives persona, lever, solver assumption and the rest a line each.