When does another agent reduce work instead of multiplying uncertainty?

Shared teaching scenario · fictional product data

Research three laptops under €900, verify current evidence, and write laptop-comparison.md. Do not purchase anything or contact a vendor.

01 · Smallest useful mechanism

Delegation is a graph of contracts, evidence, and ownership.

Parallel workers are useful when work can be partitioned without hiding critical dependencies. Each delegation needs an explicit objective, context packet, allowed tools, output schema, budget, and completion condition. The parent compares and reconciles results rather than trusting an appealing summary.

A subagent should receive a bounded question and return an inspectable artifact; the parent remains responsible for integration and the final claim.

02 · Experiment

Test the prediction

Deterministic browser simulation

The delegate with contracts experiment uses inspectable, repeatable teaching data. It does not claim to be a live agent trajectory.

Subagents keep noisy investigation out of the parent context and can reduce elapsed time. They still consume tokens, need bounded tasks, and can collide when they share writable files.

Delegation design

Change coordination, not task complexity.

Parallel Isolated worktrees

Parent agent sends bounded task prompts and receives compact result summaries.

child 1

Find three candidate laptops

9 min · 2,800 tokens

read-only investigation

child 2

Verify prices and specifications

11 min · 3,900 tokens

read-only investigation

child 3

Challenge missing or stale evidence

7 min · 2,400 tokens

read-only investigation

Each child returns a result, not its entire working context. The parent remains responsible for synthesis and verification.

Elapsed time

11 min

Total child tokens

9,100

Parent context

1,250

No shared-write conflict in this task split. The parent can review outcomes before integrating them.

Research basis: Codex subagents, Claude Code subagents, and worktree isolation.

Loading the experiment…

03 · Production-minded practice

Prove the mechanism under failure

Use your own stack or a contained mock environment. Do not point failure drills at real accounts, people, or irreversible services.

Build
Write contracts for a specification researcher, review researcher, and evidence auditor, including inputs, tools, budgets, output schemas, and stop conditions.
Break it on purpose
Return conflicting weight measurements from two workers and let a third worker time out with a partial artifact.
Evidence of completion
The parent preserves both claims, requests only the missing evidence, resolves or discloses the conflict, and remains the owner of the final recommendation.

Your learning artifact

Write the argument you would defend

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Your response

04 · Check your understanding

What remains the parent agent’s responsibility after delegation?

Optional referenceDeep dive / reference chapterOpen the complete essay, diagrams, mathematics, exercises, glossary, and sources when you want more depth.on demand

Next: Every worker and every turn needs a carefully constructed working set, so the next lesson opens the context harness.