Reading a crowd of agents
Delegation briefs
A delegation brief is the four things a subagent needs before it starts: an objective, an output format, guidance on which tools and sources to use, and explicit task boundaries.
Control sits with the person
When to use it
Whenever work is split across agents, and in any interface that lets a person compose an agent team.
What it prevents
Duplicated work and uncovered gaps, which is what happens when subagents receive a topic instead of a task.
Brief for worker 2before it starts
ObjectiveEvery price change announced this year
OutputA table: date, product, direction, source
WherePress releases and filings. Not forums.
BoundaryStop at 20 rows. Do not follow into analysis.
A task, rather than a topic.
Who ships it
- Anthropic’s research system: published as one of eight prompt-engineering principles from the build
Sources
Related patterns: Orchestrator and workers · Goal and task separation