delegate-to-preserve-context
Delegate to Sub-Agents to Preserve Main-Session Context
Section titled “Delegate to Sub-Agents to Preserve Main-Session Context”The main session is the orchestrator, not the worker. A sub-agent (Agent / Task) runs in its own isolated context window — its reads, searches, and intermediate reasoning stay there; only its final summary returns (the spawn prompt + returned summary are the only main-session token cost).
So delegate token-heavy work by default to keep the orchestrator lean — every raw dump you absorb inline is context you can’t reclaim, and signal-to-noise degrades well before the window is “full.” This is the Orchestrator-Workers pattern (Anthropic, Building Effective Agents).
Delegate by default
Section titled “Delegate by default”| Trigger | Narrowest agent |
|---|---|
| Exploration / broad search / reading 3+ files to answer one question | Explore |
| Verbose-output work you won’t reference again (logs, dumps, scans) | Explore / general-purpose |
| Mechanical edits — rename, format, lint-fix, boilerplate | t1k-fullstack-developer |
| Run a test suite + report pass/fail | t1k-tester |
| Research / web lookups / doc audits | t1k-researcher / t1k-docs-manager |
| Bounded code review (read-only → summary) | t1k-code-reviewer |
| Kit-script / cross-kit work / issue-filing / sync-back | t1k-kit-developer |
Pick the narrowest specialist (orchestration-rules.md routing table); general-purpose is the last resort.
Keep inline
Section titled “Keep inline”- Architecture, planning, design — judgment needing the full accumulated context
- Multi-file refactor where each step needs awareness of prior steps
- Sequential chains where step N needs step N-1’s full output, not a summary
- A single quick
Read/Grepyou act on immediately, or a < ~20-line patch - Synthesis of sub-agent results — the orchestrator’s core job; never delegated away
Full details
Section titled “Full details”The three guard-clauses (don’t-delegate cases — context reconstruction, output saturation, ambiguous spec), the “raw material vs conclusion” apply-test, and the super-linear-accumulation rationale: docs/delegate-to-preserve-context.md.
Related
Section titled “Related”orchestration-rules.md·fork-context-brief.md·mr-transparent-routing.md·agent-completion-discipline.md·parallelize-batch-work.md·t1k-contextskill