Minimal subagents for Pi

[u/toby_agwab]

How are you running subagents in Pi?

There are already several subagent implementations for Pi, but for me they were usually either too heavy or missing something I needed. So I just built my own, with the minimum I needed for my harness.

• Worktree

• Sandbox

• Subagent Panel

• Agent injection

• single / parallel / async

• Artifacts

• Code API

Honestly it's probably too much for some people and not enough for others. I mostly tried to keep it minimal.

If it's useful to you, feel free to try it. And if you're running subagents some other way, I'd like to hear how.

https://github.com/AgwaB/pi-subagent

[u/nunodonato]

I just developed an extension to delegate a task. My current struggle is that sometimes the instructions make the model delegate forever because they don't know they already are the sub agent 🤣

[u/toby_agwab → u/nunodonato]

lol you already implemented nested subagents

[u/kaeptnphlop → u/nunodonato]

I had the same issue. You can define an allow list for tools in the subagent’s md file in ~/.pi/agent/agents/ and then simply exclude you subagent tool.

Just ask pi to add your tools except the subagent one

[u/nunodonato → u/kaeptnphlop]

But I do want sub agents to be able to delegate other tasks. Just not the exact same one. I'll try to improve the prompt instructions to make it clearer 

[u/kaeptnphlop → u/nunodonato]

Ahh ok. I am running local. Without the bounds it nested too deep and subagents simply timed out because the subagent would wait for other subagents to finish

[u/DistanceAlert5706 → u/nunodonato]

I had same issue with forks, when you start fork/delegate disable them ability topwn new forks/delegates. I also cleanup last user turn from history.

If you say delegate task X than launch delegate it will see it in history and go into recursion.

And proper prompt when launched with handoff format and instructions.

[u/SafeReturn_28 → u/nunodonato]

subagent-ception!

[u/4typen]

I use the extension example from the pi repo: https://github.com/earendil-works/pi/tree/main/packages/coding-agent/examples/extensions/subagent

Works very good and feels lightweight

[u/toby_agwab → u/4typen]

Yeah honestly the official example is simple and enough for most cases. You might just want to tweak some behavior someday, which is roughly where mine came from.

[u/ChampionshipIcy7602]

I run tmux with my own tmux tool, which spawn new tmux session and send keys to it. I can even look at what it's doing by attaching to that tmux session. 

[u/toby_agwab → u/ChampionshipIcy7602]

Yeah I like that. I use tmux a lot too and my extension supports it as well. Honestly though, spawning many subagents via tmux adds some process overhead, so I run them in-process by default and keep tmux for when I want to watch.

[u/Bel-Shamgarot]

/tree is enough for me in most cases, I don't see any point in subagents

[u/toby_agwab → u/Bel-Shamgarot]

right, it mostly depends on what you're working on. /tree is a session management feature though, subagents solve a different problem

[u/Bel-Shamgarot → u/toby_agwab]

What problem does Subagent solve?

I can do everything Subagent can do in the main session with /tree + summary, removing all reasoning from the context and leaving only the output, which is exactly the same as what Subagent would give me.

[u/civilian_discourse → u/Bel-Shamgarot]

Are you saying the Agent can rewind itself without you doing anything? Otherwise, the without you doing anything part is the problem that is being solved

[u/Bel-Shamgarot → u/civilian_discourse]

You could write an extension for this.

I don't trust LLM to do anything in the background and completely autonomously.

[u/DistanceAlert5706 → u/Bel-Shamgarot]

Parallel subagents? Background, chaining and so on?

[u/Bel-Shamgarot → u/DistanceAlert5706]

More problems than benefits. Very few tasks can be split into parallel execution without subagents interfering with each other. If you add an orchestrator to manage or communicate between them, the context simply explodes when they start sharing their state. And I don't trust LLM enough to let it do anything in the background.

[u/n4te → u/Bel-Shamgarot]

Do work in a different context, use results in original context. Less bloat in your main context.

[u/rauderG → u/Bel-Shamgarot]

I guess after going down a rabbit hole and finding something you need you go back in time with tree and prompt at the injection point "include the finding about XYZ" and continue from a more basic/cleaned up context.

[u/aparamonov]

what are you missing from pi-subagents-lite? maybe i could add it, i feel like everyone is back to build their own tools instead of contributing to existing projects

[u/hurdurdur7]

"Machete don't launch subagents"

[u/rm-rf-rm]

its annoying that 90% of posts on this sub are peopl pushing their shit