Subagents

Subagents are specialized, autonomous AI assistants: they execute delegated, focused tasks with isolated context windows and custom tool access, maximizing efficiency.

Subagents function as a dedicated AI task force, operating within a larger orchestrator like Anthropic's Claude Code (or Spring AI). Each subagent is a separate instance, running in its own context window with a unique system prompt and specific tool permissions: for example, a 'Read-only' agent for code exploration versus a 'Write' agent for implementation. This architecture delivers three key advantages: context preservation, specialization, and parallel processing. By delegating tasks—like a security audit or a unit test run—to a focused subagent, you keep the main agent's context clean and leverage specialized expertise, often routing to cost-effective models like Haiku for simple lookups. This setup enables high-throughput workflows, allowing multiple agents to run concurrently for rapid refactoring or complex, multi-step development projects.

https://docs.anthropic.com/en/docs/claude-code/sub-agents