Subagents and Parallel Work

A single agent has one context window and one train of thought. Subagents are how you scale past both — and how you keep the main thread clean.

Why delegate at all

• Context protection — a noisy search shouldn’t flood the main window.
• Parallelism — independent questions answered at once.
• Specialization — a focused agent on a focused task.

When to spawn (and when not)

• Good: open-ended research across the codebase, multiple independent lookups.
• Bad: work you already scoped — just do it inline. Each spawn starts cold and re-derives context.
• The honest cost: delegation isn’t free; over-delegating fragments understanding.

Isolating context with worktrees

• git worktree for parallel branches without stepping on the working tree.
• Agent works on an isolated copy; clean merge or discard.

Don’t delegate understanding

• The synthesis stays with you. Subagents gather; you decide.