Cheat sheet

Sub-agents

From lesson 0011. A second loop. A second window. A short summary back.

1. IsolateHelper RAM holds the greps. Lead RAM does not.
2. BriefObjective, format, bounds. The helper has no prior chat.
3. ReturnA distilled note, not the transcript.

Not

• Not a second model by default (often inherits). Not a skill — a skill plays out in your thread so you can steer.
• Not JIT in the lead window (that still floods you). JIT card.
• Not agent teams or a research swarm. Isolation is the rent; parallelism waits.
• On a team: the definition lives in the repo so humans and agents share the Job. Team floor card.

Anthropic: tens of thousands in, 1–2k out. Claude Code / Cursor: Explore exists so search dumps stay off-stage.