Delegate

Use sub-agents when they can do focused work in parallel while the parent keeps architectural judgment, integration, and final verification.

Keep vs Delegate

Keep in the parent:

• Understanding the user's actual request and constraints
• Architecture, security, product, and release-risk decisions
• Cross-module integration
• Final review, test interpretation, and user-facing summary

Delegate to sub-agents:

• Read-only exploration over a bounded file set
• Mechanical edits with a clear file ownership boundary
• Focused test or lint runs
• Boilerplate generation from an explicit spec
• Independent checks that can run while parent work continues

Do not delegate tiny one-step tasks, ambiguous product decisions, destructive operations without a clear acceptance criterion, or final verification.

Launch Focused Work

Use agent for a focused child run. Launch independent children together so they can run in parallel.

Give each child a concrete outcome and acceptance criteria. Let it continue until the work is complete or it needs input. Do not invent time, turn or token budgets, or tell it to stop early because a percentage of a budget has elapsed. The runtime carries any limits explicitly configured by the owner.

Prefer provider-neutral model_strength over hardcoded model ids. Children inherit the active model by default (model_strength: "same"), including type: "explore", so pass model_strength: "faster" explicitly to get the cheaper same-family sibling for read-only exploration:

{
  "name": "config_audit",
  "prompt": "Inspect crates/tui/src/config.rs and crates/tui/src/settings.rs for duplicate model-default logic. Return file/line findings only; do not edit files.",
  "type": "explore",
  "model_strength": "faster",
  "cwd": "."
}

For code changes, give the child a precise write boundary and tell it not to revert unrelated edits. Keep implementation children capable with model_strength: "same":