Subagents and Delegation

Delegation is powerful when the work can be broken into clean, parallelizable units. It is wasteful when the task is still ambiguous or tightly coupled.

Good Delegation Cases

• one agent explores the codebase while another drafts tests
• separate workers own separate directories
• a side task like documentation research can happen in parallel

Bad Delegation Cases

• both agents need to edit the same file
• the task is still under-specified
• the main agent is blocked on the delegated answer immediately
• work is duplicated because the boundaries were vague

Delegation Rules

• Delegate bounded tasks, not fuzzy goals.
• Give clear ownership for files or outcomes.
• Do not split work before the main plan is stable.
• Review delegated results before merging them into the main change.

The point of subagents is not “more agents.” It is faster progress without coordination chaos.