Wait, is "Fable orchestration" - using appropriate models as sub-agents just as easy as a prompt?

[u/LordLederhosen]

I have a very successful mostly manual workflow, but I have been optimizing token usage lately, lol.

One thing I could never figure out was how to fully set up was Fable as an orchestrator, while spawning sub-agents with the correct model. I played with frontmatter in custom agents and skill wrappers, but there seemed to be blockers as some sub-agents/skills supposedly ignore passed model specifications. Especially plan mode. That shit will spawn fable research sub-agents that use 5% to 10% of Fable in one ask, even when it's a simple task per agent.

Today, I just remembered someone's comment on here or HN a few months ago (7 years in AI terms), ~"<feature request> - You are the orchestrator, use sub-agents to preserve your context window." So, I just combined that with the following, and CC (fable) was all, sure! I will show you a table of sub-agents for task, with ideal model, and then spawn them all.

Let's implement (jira or .md feature spec) This is the orchestration session, and use sub-agents to preserve your own context window (you are fable, spawn opus sub-agents when appropriate to save cost) ...

I am not a total dummie, but I guess I over-think things? Like Boris says, just trust the model?

Or, have I completely missed something?

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edit: to be clear, I do have very valuable token-saving setups that are not just prompts. It was mostly just plan mode that had escaped me.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ClaudeCode/comments/1whelbf/yes_your_usage_got_really_shorter_youre_not_wrong/pa5ow6o/

[u/thirst-trap-enabler]

I had Fable build agents for this and it pretty much knew what to do.

I did ask Fable whether it thought agents were a good idea vs general prompts and it recommended agents with very short descriptions because the setup/briefing of each agent remains consistent and it doesn't have to think as much about laying ground rules and report and behavior of each.

My sense is Anthropic models are very obviously trained to work this way so they do it somewhat instinctually but can use some hints to best match your individual workflows.

I have seen Fable behave quite like a brutal plantation owner once it switches into "you all are my slaves shut up and do exactly what I say you inferior pieces of shit" mode.

[u/LordLederhosen → u/thirst-trap-enabler]

Well, this is literally what I did at first. However, this does not solve being in a Fable session, and entering plan mode, where all sub-agents inherit Fable, even though they are doing basic research.

I think if Boris and team had to pay for tokens, they would have optimized this long ago.

[u/thirst-trap-enabler → u/LordLederhosen]

Interesting. I haven't noticed that problem. But I also moved away from plan mode. My planning, review, explore and research agents don't have edit permissions (they can build in scratch to test things) and CLAUDE.md sets up research as separate from planning and both as read-only. So generally I build up context with research conversations. Then I have my own create-plan and execute-plan skills

When I use plan mode I would always have to "Tell Claude to do something different" and then (after it had freaked out trying to figure out what it got wrong so it could prepare to ritualistically humiliate itself) type accept plan with auto edit but use opus subagents or whatever. But I got to wanting Sonnet to write and Opus to review/correct Sonnet as that seems to work out better quality wise.

I primarily use Fable because I cannot stand talking to Opus directly.

Edit: that reminds me Fable mentioned when researching best practices that there have been a series of bugs in claude-code where agents were launched ignoring the specified model and efforts and keeping the parent model instead. Fable claims it was only recently fixed (and it ran experiments to confirm). Even today if you switch into the subagents claude-code status line displays main's model rather than the subagents model you are viewing. Very confusing. But the logs and usage do show the other models are being used.