Subagents and Context Isolation: The Delegation Move

Why the parent’s context window is the scarce resource, how to write a brief a fresh-context subagent can actually execute, what delegation costs in tokens, loss, and latency — and the three patterns (fan-out research, isolated risky work, fresh-eyes review) that earn the overhead.

Content current as of 2026-09.

Lessons

  1. Why spawn a subagent at all
  2. The brief is everything
  3. What delegation costs
  4. Three patterns that earn the overhead
  5. Drill: delegate or do inline?