> ## 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. # Strictness > How closely Hazel follows your plan design: Exact, Guided, or Flexible, and how to tell which setting a plan was built on. You put real time into a plan design, so you need to know how closely Hazel will follow it. **Strictness** decides that. It is set per design, not per firm: your base template has its own, and so does every Client persona with its own design. Find it on the **Plan design** card in **Settings → Planning**, in a panel headed **Strictness** showing the current setting and its one-line consequence. Select it to change. ## The three settings | | Exact | Guided | Flexible | | ---------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------ | ------------------------------------------------------------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------- | | On screen | Plans must match this design | Hazel follows this design, adapting where a household's facts call for it | Your design is a starting point, and Hazel composes each plan freely | | Must include every **Always** block | Yes, checked before publishing | Yes, unless the household's facts say otherwise | Treated as a strong preference | | May add a section or block your design does not have | No | Yes, unless you turn **Allow additions** off | Yes | | May leave a block out | Not an **Always** one | Yes, when the facts call for it | Yes | ## Check which one you are on A new firm starts on **Flexible**: the base template, and two of the three Client personas your firm arrives with. Only **Retiree / Decumulator** ships on **Guided**, so if plans keep arriving in a shape you did not ask for, look here first. Guided is where to move once you have a design you trust. ## Allow additions Below the three settings sits a single switch, **Allow additions**, described on screen as Hazel adding sections or blocks you did not design. It starts on. Turn it off under **Guided** when you want your shape followed and nothing extra. Under **Exact** the switch turns off and grays out, whatever it was set to before. Move that design back to **Guided** or **Flexible** later and it is still off, so turn it back on if you want Hazel covering ground your design does not. There is no matching switch for leaving things out; that is each block's own setting. ## Choosing | Pick | When | | ------------ | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | **Guided** | You want your shape respected, with room for Hazel to notice what is different about a household: no children, so skip the education section | | **Exact** | The design is a commitment: a deliverable format your firm has standardized on, or a shape a compliance review has approved | | **Flexible** | The design is a preference, while your firm is still working out its template, or on a persona covering households with little in common | Exact checks the finished plan against your design and sends it back to be fixed, though now and then one still publishes with something not matching, so read the first few plans built on an Exact design before you present one. An **Always** block covering something a household's facts cannot support gets produced thin rather than dropped. ## Strictness and each block's own setting Strictness governs the whole design; each block also carries its own setting for whether it belongs in a plan. Select a chip on the **Plan design** card and the first field is **When it appears**. | Setting | What it means | | ------------------- | -------------------------------------------- | | **Always** | In every plan you build. | | **When it applies** | Only when the household's facts call for it. | The same control is labeled **When it shows up** in the layout editor. An older design may show a third choice, **Suggested (legacy)**, which Hazel may skip freely. Open that block in the layout editor and the field says the setting is retiring and asks you to pick one of the two above. The third choice then disappears from both screens. A block set to **When it applies** stays the household's call under every setting, Exact included. See [Block settings](/guides/financial-planning/plan-design/block-settings). ## Telling whether your strictness is right Open a plan, look at **Plan sections** in the left nav, and compare it with the chips on your **Plan design** card. A section you designed that is not there, or a section you did not design that turned up, is Hazel's read of that household. Check which design the plan was built on first: the **Applied settings** block in the plan's **Appendix** names the persona Hazel matched, or reads **None**. A persona with its own design held that plan to that persona's strictness, and otherwise your base template's applied. Then act on what keeps repeating: * The same section keeps disappearing. Your design is asking for something your households cannot support. Move that block to **When it applies**, or take it out. * Hazel keeps adding the same topic. Add it to your design so you control how it is written, or turn **Allow additions** off. ## Where to go next * [Block settings](/guides/financial-planning/plan-design/block-settings): the per-block controls, including when a block appears. * [Plan design](/guides/financial-planning/plan-design/overview): the design that strictness applies to. * [Inheritance and re-syncing](/guides/financial-planning/settings/personas/inheritance): changing strictness on a persona that follows the base template gives that persona its own copy.