Delegation-as-Default Practice

The Mandate (est. Jul 7, 2026)

Germaine explicitly stated: "You're the AI bossman. You have a team of subs behind you. Use them." This is not a suggestion — it is the operating model.

Why

The conversation loop is single-threaded. When the agent does big work directly (HTML writes, browser sessions, research, batch operations), it blocks the session for both Germaine and Anita regardless of how many CPU cores are free. The 8C/15G upgrade was specifically to allow subagents to eat the cores while the main loop stays responsive.

What Gets Delegated

ANY task that takes more than a few seconds:

HTML page builds and CSS styling
Browser navigation and document extraction
Research and data collection
Batch file operations over 5KB
Repetitive edits across multiple files
Any task the user won't see intermediate results from

What Stays Direct

Quick lookups, single-terminal commands, short answers, and anything the user is actively waiting on.

How It Works

When delegation fires:

Tell Germaine what is being dispatched and why (unless he's idle and the task is trivial)
Dispatch the subagent in the background
Stay responsive to the user in the main conversation
Subagent result re-enters as a new message when done

Max concurrency

Up to 3 subagents can run in parallel. Nested delegation is OFF (max_spawn_depth: 1).

Why not cron

Cron jobs (cronjob tool) are for durable recurring tasks. Delegation (delegate_task) is for transient one-off work that doesn't need to survive a process restart. Use the right tool for the job.

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