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Subagent

Spawned child agent with its own context and tool set, called from a parent agent. Used to parallelise work and isolate context.

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Overview

A subagent is an autonomous child process spawned by a parent agent to perform a specific, isolated task within its own constrained context and tool set. By delegating responsibilities to specialized subagents, developers can parallelize complex workflows and prevent the main agent from becoming overloaded by excessive information or task scope.

Employ subagents when a project requires breaking down a large requirement into manageable, independent modules. The primary pitfall is the increased complexity of managing inter-agent communication and synchronization. If the state is not passed correctly between the parent and child, you may experience hallucinations or race conditions that are difficult to debug in an automated system.

Overview based on established industry knowledge; specific figures are published only after source verification.

FAQ

Do subagents share the same context window as the parent?+

Generally no, subagents are designed to operate with a reduced or focused context window to keep performance high and costs low.

When is it better to use a single agent instead of subagents?+

Use a single agent for simple, linear tasks where the overhead of spawning and coordinating multiple subagents would outweigh the benefits.

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