Running 3+ subagents likely burns tokens for zero quality gain, argues dev
StevenMathern · x · 2026-09-16
StevenMathern argues that running more than 2 subagents at once almost certainly burns tokens for zero quality gain, because agents don't trust each other enough to avoid double-checking everyone's work.
pvncher adds that cheap models are 20-50x cheaper per token but burn 20x more tokens to match frontier models on hard problems; doodlestein responds that he skips subagents entirely — each agent is a full harness instance — and uses beads for task decomposition.
Related event: Running More Than 2 Parallel Sub-Agents Is Likely Just Burning Tokens(7 posts)→
More from coding & agent
- Cohere Labs agent team-construction method cuts multi-agent costs by 70% — Cohere_Labs · 2026-11-02
- Long-read: AI's real value comes after the efficiency era—infra glut, agent tooling boom — yangyi · 2026-11-02
- offprompt: MIT-licensed MCP server hands agents API keys without ever exposing them — Vast_Ad_7338 · 2026-11-02
- Reddit idea: expose every OOP public method as AI agent tools to agentify legacy apps — out_of_nowhere__ · 2026-11-02
- DeepSeek design doc: a person can only follow 3-5 agent sessions at once, attention is the real bottleneck — heyshrutimishra · 2026-11-02
- Software fundamentals are key to getting good results from AI coding agents — bendee983 · 2026-11-02