Subagents
Spawning helper agents from a parent agent.
Subagents are helper agents created by a parent agent to handle focused parts of a larger task.
Use subagents when work benefits from parallel investigation, implementation, or review but should still remain connected to the same broader objective.
When to use subagents
Use subagents for:
- Long-running work that benefits from delegation.
- Independent codebase investigations.
- Focused review passes.
- Comparing possible implementations.
- Splitting a larger task into scoped worker tasks.
Avoid subagents when one direct agent conversation would be simpler.
Common patterns
Common subagent patterns include:
- A planning agent asking another agent to inspect a risky subsystem.
- A reviewer agent checking a branch while the main agent continues fixing.
- A parent agent comparing two implementation options before choosing one.
Workspace boundaries
Subagents should usually work inside the same workspace or execution environment as the parent task unless Proliferate explicitly offers a separate workspace handoff.
This keeps ownership, credentials, and review state understandable.
How subagents are wired
Subagent management ships as a built-in plugin skill. It's available to any session where the workspace has subagents enabled, and the parent agent gets tools for spawning, waiting on, reading from, and messaging child agents directly.