Delegation

delegate_task allows a parent agent to spawn an isolated child agent for focused subtasks, then summarize and return results.

What the child agent inherits

The child agent is not a complete copy of the parent but is deliberately constrained:

• memory.enable=false
• agent.skip_context_files=true
• agent.quiet_mode=true
• tools.delegate_task.enabled=false
• only allowed built-in tools
• optional alternate llm config

This makes it more like a "constrained worker call" than an unbounded multi-agent tree.

Parameters

Parameter	Description
goal	subtask goal, required
context	background info or constraints
allowed_tools	tool whitelist visible to child agent
max_iterations	max iterations for child agent

Config

tools:
  delegate_task:
    enabled: true
    max_depth: 2
    max_iterations: 20
    blocked_tools:
      - delegate_task

You can also configure tools.delegate_task.model to use a cheaper or faster model for subtasks.

Guardrails

• disabled by default, requires explicit tools.delegate_task.enabled
• refuses to spawn when current_depth >= max_depth
• blocked_tools always takes precedence over allowed_tools
• child agent returns only a structured status and plain text summary

Example

{
  "tool": "delegate_task",
  "goal": "Summarize the HTTP channel implementation and list public endpoints",
  "allowed_tools": ["read", "exec"],
  "max_iterations": 8
}