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How to use Claude Code subagents to parallelize development

(zachwills.net)
280 points zachwills | 4 comments | 09 Sep 25 13:21 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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sixhobbits ◴[13 Sep 25 08:00 UTC] No.45230219[source]▶
I often see people making these sub agents modelled on roles like product manager, back end developer, etc.

I spent a few hours trying stuff like this and the results were pretty bad compared to just using CC with no agent specific instructions.

Maybe I needed to push through and find a combination that works but I don't find this article convincing as the author basically says "it works" without showing examples or comparing doing the same project with and without subagents.

Anyone got anything more convincing to suggest it's worth me putting more time into building out flows like this instead of just using a generic agent for everything?

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1. lucraft ◴[13 Sep 25 09:15 UTC] No.45230614[source]▶
Right - don’t make subagents for the different roles, make them to manage context for token heavy tasks.

A backend developer subagent is going to do the job ok, but then the supervisor agent will be missing useful context about what’s been done and will go off the rails.

The ideal sub agent is one that can take a simple question, use up massive amounts of tokens answering it, and then return a simple answer, dropping all those intermediate tokens as unnecessary.

Documentation Search is a good one - does X library have a Y function - the subagent can search the web, read doc MCPs, and then return a simple answer without the supervisor needing to be polluted with all the context

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2. csar ◴[13 Sep 25 09:32 UTC] No.45230697[source]▶
This is exactly right.
3. macrolime ◴[13 Sep 25 09:42 UTC] No.45230751[source]▶
This is my experience too.

Make agents for tasks, not roles.

I've seen this for coding agents using spec-driven development for example. You can try to divide agents into lots of different roles that roughly correspond to human job positions, like for example BMad does, or you can simply make each agent do a task and have a template for the task. Like make an implementation plan using a template for an implementation plan or make a task list, using a template for a task list. In general, I've gotten much better results with agents that has a specific task to do than trying to give a role, with a job-like description.

For code review, I don't use a code reviewer agent, instead I've defined a dozen code reviewing tasks, that each runs as separate agents (though I group some related tasks together).

4. redhale ◴[13 Sep 25 13:07 UTC] No.45231797[source]▶
This!

Subagents open all the new metaphorical tabs to get to some answer, then close those tabs so the main agent can proceed with the main task.

Excellent article on this pattern: https://jxnl.co/writing/2025/08/29/context-engineering-slash...