Delegate to child Agents

Choose synchronous delegation or managed tasks, inspect lifecycle, and keep mutation inside isolated worktrees.

The official code and code-sandbox Profiles include bounded child Agents. The parent stays in control: a child is selected as a Tool target, receives a fresh durable Session, and returns a bounded result. This is not a handoff or a shared group chat.

Choose the smallest delegation mode

Need	Tool	Lifecycle
One bounded answer before continuing	`delegate`	Waits and returns the result in one call
Work that may continue while the parent does something else	`spawn_subagent`	Returns a task ID
Observe without consuming a result	`list_subagents`	Stable, non-blocking snapshot
Collect a terminal result and release its slot	`wait_subagent`	Consumes the result
Add direction at the next model boundary	`send_subagent`	Durably records accepted input
Stop detached work	`cancel_subagent`	Requests cancellation

The available child name is selected from the immutable Plan. Official coding Profiles currently expose read-only researcher and reviewer Agents plus mutation-capable worker-a and worker-b lanes.

Understand the authority boundary

Read-only children use a restricted Tool set. Root write and process authority does not automatically flow into them. Every child gets a fresh Session rather than inheriting the parent’s whole transcript.

Mutation-capable workers first receive a dedicated Git worktree below the Agent Home runtime directory. Workspace read, edit, process, and Git providers all observe that same scoped path; the parent Workspace remains unchanged.

Review mutation before integration

Child completion does not merge its work. The parent follows a separate, reviewed sequence:

list_worktrees finds retained allocations.
review_worktree requires a clean child checkout and locks its exact HEAD and diff digest.
integrate_worktree verifies the retained review again, requires a clean parent Workspace, and performs a non-fast-forward merge.

Dirty, changed-after-review, conflicting, and over-capacity states fail closed. No force cleanup or automatic conflict resolution is implied.

Know what is durable

The child Session is the durable execution record. Task handles and allocation registries belong to the active Generation: they do not promise recovery after Host suspension or a Generation switch. list_subagents does not consume a terminal result; only wait_subagent releases that task slot.

If you only need read-only planning, use the plan Profile instead of creating a child task. See Profiles and Tools.