Sub-Agent Spawning UPDATED
Problem
Large multi-file tasks blow out the main agent's context window and reasoning budget.
Solution
Let the main agent spawn focused sub-agents, each with its own fresh context, to work in parallel on shardable subtasks. Aggregate their results when done.
Recent developments show that improved agent state externalization capabilities may make subagent delegation more practical by helping agents better identify which tasks are suitable for delegation and how to communicate necessary context to subagents.
Example (YAML front-matter refactor)
sequenceDiagram
MainAgent->>GlobTool: "*.md"
MainAgent->>TaskTool: spawn 4 sub-agents with 9 files each
loop per SubAgent
SubAgent->>Files: update front-matter
SubAgent->>Git: commit
end
MainAgent->>Git: merge branches ➜ single PR
References
- Raising An Agent - Episode 6: Claude 4 Sonnet edits 36 blog posts via four sub-agents.
- Cognition AI: Devin & Claude Sonnet 4.5 - discusses how improved model judgment about state externalization may make subagent delegation more practical