Opus 5.5 spawned 12 Opus subagents to read 87 transcripts, burning a 5-hour limit in 5 minutes
Resident_Kiwi7592 · reddit · 2026-10-20
A Reddit user asked Opus 5.5 (medium) to reorganize a large folder. The model found a subfolder with 87 .txt files (5MB of conference transcripts) and decided it was essential to spin up 12 subagents — all running Opus 5.5 medium — to mine them, executing 311 steps and torching the entire 5-hour usage limit in 5 minutes.
The poster isn't mad, but flags a real gap: the Claude desktop app appears to offer no way to set default models for subagents, even though few agent tasks actually need Opus-level capability.
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