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Comment by faangguyindia

3 days ago

You don't need subagent, I shared this on ClaudeCode sub as well https://www.reddit.com/r/ClaudeCode/s/barbpBxG78

Subagents do not work well for coding at all

19 comments

faangguyindia

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CharlesW  3 days ago

> Subagents do not work well for coding at all

Subagents can work very well, especially for larger projects. Based on this statement, I think you're experiencing how I felt in my early experience with them, and that your mental model for how to use them effectively is still embryonic.

I've found that the primary benefit for subagents is context/focus management. For example, I'm doing auth using Stytch. What I absolutely don't want to do is load https://stytch.com/docs/llms.txt and instructions for leveraging it in my CLAUDE.md. But it's perfect for my auth agent, and the quality of the output for auth-related tasks is far higher as a result.

A recommended read: https://jxnl.co/writing/2025/08/29/context-engineering-slash...

  • GoatInGrey  2 days ago

    I'm unsure if this also qualifies as incompetence/embryonic understanding, though I've used LLMs for hundreds of hours on development tasks and have also found that sub-agents are not good at programming. They're more suitable for research tasks to provide informed context to the parent agent while isolating it from the token consumption which retrieving that context cost.

    Zooming out, my findings on LLMs with programming is that they work well in specific patterns and quickly go to shit when completely unsupervised by a SME.

      * Prototyping

  * Scaffolding (i.e. write an endpoint that does X that I'll refine into a sustainable implementation myself)

  * Questions on the codebase that require open-ended searching 
 
  * Specific programming questions (i.e. "How do I make an HTTP call in ___ ?")

  * Idea generation ("List three approaches for how you'd ____" or "How would you refactor this package to separate concerns?")

    The LLMs all fuck up on something in every task that they perform due to the intersection of operating on assumptions and working on large problem spaces. The amount of effort it takes to completely eliminate the presence of assumptions in the agent make the process slower than writing the code yourself. So people try to find the balance they're comfortable with.

  • johntash  3 days ago

    > I've found that the primary benefit for subagents is context/focus management. For example, I'm doing auth using Stytch. What I absolutely don't want to do is load https://stytch.com/docs/llms.txt and instructions for leveraging it in my CLAUDE.md.

    > But it's perfect for my auth agent, and the quality of the output for auth-related tasks is far higher as a result.

    What about just using a sub agent specifically to fetch llms.txt and find the answer to the question for the parent agent? Instead of handing a full task off to it

  • faangguyindia  2 days ago

    You didn't not bother reading my actual criticism against subagent model: https://www.reddit.com/r/ClaudeCode/s/weQIbVtAtG

    Let me say it again, subagent model does not work for things which most developer do 90% of their time they want to implement a feature in their app.

    • CharlesW  2 days ago

      > You didn't not bother reading my actual criticism against subagent model:

      Nope, I did. It's why I was under the impression that you hadn't yet figured out how to use them successfully. That's why I posted a specific example where a subagent is useful and why, hoping you and others might benefit from that.

      If the subagent model does not work 90% of the time, why does the workflow model you recommend in another Reddit post you linked to specifically recommend delegating work to sub-agents throughout?

      1 reply →

rapind  3 days ago

Subagents suffer from the same overriding problem with "Claude Contexting", which is context wrangling. Subagents "should" help to compartmentalize and manage your context better, but not in my experience so far. I found I was jumping through a lot of hoops with special instructions, manual compacts, up front super detailed plans, and MCPs just to manage my context. So subagents is probably the same, where you want to have it handle tasks that do not require context from your main thread.

P.S. I know they added 1m context to their API, with a price increase, but AFAIK the subscription still uses the 200k context.

weird-eye-issue  3 days ago

Subagents are literally built into Claude Code via a built-in tool where it can recursively call itself

  • faangguyindia  3 days ago

    Yes I know, but subagent suffer from context amnesia during context handouts which is why this subagent use is flawed for purpose of coding product features. I've been using these tools a lot and installed every ai agent out there i could find.

    • CuriouslyC  3 days ago

      Yup, this is the killer. Subagents SEEM good when you use them on greenfield projects, you can grind out a whole first pass without burning through much of your main context, it seems magical. But when you have a complex project that handoff is the kiss of death.

      7 replies →