| description | Tools the agent uses to plan, delegate, and ask for help. |
|---|---|
| icon | sitemap |
Beyond doing the work, the agent has tools for organising the work - planning multi-step jobs, delegating to specialists, spawning subagents, and pausing to ask the user when something is genuinely ambiguous.
| Tool | What it does |
|---|---|
todo_write |
Maintain a structured TODO list across a long task. Marked done as work progresses. |
spawn_subagent |
Spin up a fresh agent with its own context window for a self-contained subtask. |
spawn_worker_thread |
Background work that doesn't need to block the main conversation. |
delegate |
Hand a task to a specialist (e.g. an archetype with different prompts/tools/permissions). |
archetype_delegation |
Route to a named archetype - coder, researcher, planner, etc. |
skill_delegation |
Hand off to a skill installed in the workspace. |
ask_clarification |
Pause and ask the user a precise question instead of guessing. |
plan_exit |
Exit a planning phase and start executing. |
check_onboarding_status / complete_onboarding |
Gate behaviour on whether the user has finished onboarding. |
Long tasks fall apart when the agent tries to keep everything in one head. Splitting work via TODOs and subagents means:
- Each subagent gets a clean context - fewer tokens, fewer distractions.
- The main thread keeps a high-level view of progress.
- Failures in one branch don't poison the rest.
Asking for clarification is a tool too, on purpose: it makes "I should ask the user" a visible decision the agent can be steered toward, not an emergent behaviour.
- Coder - what a coder-archetype subagent typically uses.
- Subconscious Loop - the always-on background agent thread.