73 lines
2.3 KiB
Markdown
73 lines
2.3 KiB
Markdown
---
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summary: "Sub-agents: spawning isolated agent runs that announce results back to the requester chat"
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read_when:
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- You want background/parallel work via the agent
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- You are changing sessions_spawn or sub-agent tool policy
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---
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# Sub-agents
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Sub-agents are background agent runs spawned from an existing agent run. They run in their own session (`subagent:<uuid>`) and, when finished, **announce** their result back to the requester chat provider.
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Primary goals:
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- Parallelize “research / long task / slow tool” work without blocking the main run.
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- Keep sub-agents isolated by default (session separation + optional sandboxing).
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- Keep the tool surface hard to misuse: sub-agents do **not** get session tools by default.
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- Avoid nested fan-out: sub-agents cannot spawn sub-agents.
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## Tool
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Use `sessions_spawn`:
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- Starts a sub-agent run (`deliver: false`, global lane: `subagent`)
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- Then runs an announce step and posts the announce reply to the requester chat provider
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Tool params:
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- `task` (required)
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- `label?` (optional)
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- `timeoutSeconds?` (default `0`; `0` = fire-and-forget)
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- `cleanup?` (`delete|keep`, default `delete`)
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## Announce
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Sub-agents report back via an announce step:
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- The announce step runs inside the sub-agent session (not the requester session).
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- If the sub-agent replies exactly `ANNOUNCE_SKIP`, nothing is posted.
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- Otherwise the announce reply is posted to the requester chat provider via the gateway `send` method.
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## Tool Policy (sub-agent tools)
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By default, sub-agents get **all tools except session tools**:
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- `sessions_list`
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- `sessions_history`
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- `sessions_send`
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- `sessions_spawn`
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Override via config:
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```json5
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{
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agent: {
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subagents: {
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maxConcurrent: 1,
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tools: {
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// deny wins
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deny: ["gateway", "cron"],
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// if allow is set, it becomes allow-only (deny still wins)
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// allow: ["read", "bash", "process"]
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}
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}
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}
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}
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```
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## Concurrency
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Sub-agents use a dedicated in-process queue lane:
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- Lane name: `subagent`
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- Concurrency: `agent.subagents.maxConcurrent` (default `1`)
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## Limitations
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- Sub-agent announce is **best-effort**. If the gateway restarts, pending “announce back” work is lost.
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- Sub-agents still share the same gateway process resources; treat `maxConcurrent` as a safety valve.
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