Are Subagents an Antipattern? Devs Debate Scheduling vs. Deterministic Software
JensHonack · x · 2026-10-31
wereness sparked a debate by calling subagents "an insane antipattern": scheduling and delegation are solved extremely well by deterministic software, and wasting tokens and context to poorly imitate it makes no sense.
JensHonack followed up with three pointed questions: how do you handle multithreading without subcontexts? If you can spin up and shut down agents at will, do context windows even matter long term? And as the cost of intelligence races to zero, will token spend still matter in a few months?
The exchange probes core assumptions of current agent orchestration design.
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