Subagents Are the Only Claude Code Tasks Worth Downgrading to Cheaper Models
Interesting-Bite316 · reddit · 2026-10-30
After weeks of testing, the author found swapping Claude Code's main model to a cheaper one loses prompt-cache savings, but subagents—starting with fresh context for bounded exploration tasks (60% of his token spend)—can safely run on cheap models like Haiku, or any model via an Anthropic-compatible gateway. Keep code writing and architecture on the main model; watch for silent tool-call failures on open-weight models.
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