Overview › 5Context › c.Isolating subtasks

Isolating subtasks

Isolate sub-tasks in their own contexts. 2 optimizations.

i.

Discrete phase separation

Run research, planning and implementation as separate agent sessions, each starting from a fresh context that holds only the previous phase's written output (a research document, then a plan file), and have a person review that document before the next phase starts.

Mixed qualityMixed costSlower

Tier 4 · restructuring · changes context · any agent · 6 sources, 3 measured
ii.

Sub-agent architectures with clean contexts

Hand a context-heavy side task (code search, reading many files, documents or logs) to a sub-agent that starts with a fresh context and only the tools it needs, and have it return a short result or file references so the parent's context stays small.

Mixed qualityMixed costMixed performance

Tier 4 · restructuring · changes context · any agent · 12 sources, 10 measured

Try it for yourself

Paste this into Claude Code, or any coding agent, in your agent's repo to check it for these optimizations.

Read these agent optimizations (Context: Isolating subtasks), each with the signs that it applies:
- 5.c.i Discrete phase separation: https://mahalsystems.ai/aot/optimizations/discrete-phase-separation.md
- 5.c.ii Sub-agent architectures with clean contexts: https://mahalsystems.ai/aot/optimizations/isolated-subagent-context.md
- 6.b.iii Use multi-agent orchestration only for breadth-first, independent sub-tasks: https://mahalsystems.ai/aot/optimizations/multi-agent-for-breadth.md
Then check whether any of them applies to the agent in this repository. Look for each one's signs under "When it applies" in its code, prompts and tools, and in any traces or eval results you can find. Tell me which apply, strongest first, with what you found for each. Don't change anything yet.

Isolating subtasks

Discrete phase separation

Sub-agent architectures with clean contexts

See also

Use multi-agent orchestration only for breadth-first, independent sub-tasks

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