dagger/docs/core-concepts/1202-plan.md

---
slug: /1202/plan
displayed_sidebar: europa
---

# It all starts with a plan

A CI/CD pipeline declared in Dagger starts with a plan, specifically `dagger.#Plan`

This plan is the entrypoint for everything that runs within a pipeline.

The simplest plan will have at least one input - the source code - and a few actions, usually build, test & deploy.
This is our **Getting Started** example app plan structure:

```cue
dagger.#Plan & {
  inputs: {
    directories: app: path: "./"
    // ...
  }
  actions: {
    build: yarn.#Build & {
      // ...
    }
    test: yarn.#Run & {
      // ...
    }
    // ...
  }
}
```

When the above plan gets executed via `dagger up`, it produces the following output:

```shell
dagger up dev.cue
[✔] inputs.directories.app                                        0.1s
[✔] actions.build                                                 0.6s
[✔] actions.test                                                  0.6s
```

Since these actions have run before, they are cached and take less than 1 second to complete.

While the names used for the actions above - `build`, `test` - are short & descriptive,
any other names would have worked. Put differently, action naming does not affect plan execution.

In the example above, the `build` action is an instance of the yarn package build definition.
This is written as `build: yarn.#Build`

Default definition configuration can be modified via curly brackets, e.g.

```cue
  actions: {
    build: yarn.#Build & {
      // ...
    }
```

We can build complex pipelines efficiently by referencing any definition, from any package in our actions.
This is one of the fundamental concepts that makes Dagger a powerful devkit for CI/CD.
Before we can use a package in a plan, we need to declare it at the top of the pipeline configuration, like this:

```cue
import (
  "universe.dagger.io/yarn"
)
```

Since we are using the plan definition from the dagger package - `dagger.#Plan` - we also need to declare it at the top of the pipeline configuration:

```cue
import (
  "dagger.io/dagger"
  "universe.dagger.io/yarn"
)
```

Now that we understand the basics of a Dagger plan, we are ready to learn more about inputs and how to configure them.
This will enable us to configure plans just-in-time, which is something that typically happanes on every CI run.