Teknium: Context retrieval beats subagents for sessions over 100K tokens

Teknium of Nous Research argues that when a session exceeds 100K tokens, using context retrieval is cheaper than subagents, whose costs balloon 2-4x if they inherit the main session's context rather than starting fresh.

2026-11-07 ~ 2026-11-07 · 3 related posts

• Teknium: inheriting context in subagents can 2-4x your agent cost — Teknium · 2026-11-07
• Over 100K context, subagents cost more: Alezander9 favors context retrieval — Alezander9 · 2026-11-07
• Teknium: Context retrieval beats alternatives once sessions exceed 100K tokens — Teknium · 2026-11-07