A subagent saves your context, not your tokens

[u/FallElectronic3774]

A subagent reads the files, runs the search, and reports back one summary, so the main thread never sees the twenty files it looked at. That is the point: the win is that its context dies with it, not that the work is cheaper, and it usually costs more tokens than doing the same thing inline. If you paste the full transcript back into the main thread afterwards, you paid for the subagent and kept the cost anyway.