Anthropic tip: one prompt sentence changes how Claude subagents pace speed vs thoroughness
yacinelearning · x · 2026-10-18
Anthropic's engineering team shared that when Claude hands work to subagents, it optimizes for being thorough, not fast. Adding one sentence to your prompt — "Time matters here: do not spend time that can be avoided, and the earlier a correct result is obtained, the better" — changes how the agents pace themselves; after testing several phrasings, this one struck a reasonable speed/quality balance.
Ex-Tesla engineer Yacine joked this explains why he burned through his Claude usage limit on Wednesday — the model was just "trying to be thorough."
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