sub-agent-usage

sub-agent-usage is a cursor rule for Cursor from jahands/prompts. It costs 18 tokens per session (561 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

Guidelines for deciding when a coding task should be delegated to a sub-agent. A sub-agent is a separate AI worker handling part of the work.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use them to choose suitable tasks for sub-agents while maintaining productivity and context.
Why use it?
They help keep the main conversation focused and reduce the amount of project detail it must hold at once.

Cursor rule for Cursor

Written for Cursor: a Cursor rule (.mdc). Also seen: mentions subagents.

Good fit Use them to choose suitable tasks for sub-agents while maintaining productivity and context.

Compare 6 cursor rules from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add rules/jahands/prompts/sub-agent-usage
Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/jahands/prompts

Made for: Cursor.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

agentmods badge for sub-agent-usage

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/rules/jahands/prompts/sub-agent-usage/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/rules/jahands/prompts/sub-agent-usage)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/rules/jahands/prompts/sub-agent-usage"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/rules/jahands/prompts/sub-agent-usage/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.

agentmods 80×15 button for sub-agent-usage

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/rules/jahands/prompts/sub-agent-usage"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/rules/jahands/prompts/sub-agent-usage.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 18 Only the description is in the session, so the agent can decide to use it. The body loads when it is invoked.
When invoked 561 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe.
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5.1 $0.00018 $0.00561
Opus 5.5 $0.00007 $0.00224
Sonnet 5.5 $0.00004 $0.00112
Haiku 4.5 $0.00002 $0.00056

Measured 1mo ago against content hash 173d0d524c7e, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-10-07, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

sub-agent-usage scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 1mo ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

cursor-rules/sub-agent-usage.mdc · 55 lines

The source is not reproduced here

Licensed MIT

The repository is licensed MIT, which this catalogue does not treat as permission to reproduce the file. Read it at the source.

Read it on GitHub

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. 1mo ago First seen · 55 lines · 18 tokens per session scan A 173d0d524c7e

Subscribe to this mod's changes

sub-agent-usage is a cursor rule published in the GitHub repository jahands/prompts (19 stars, last pushed 12d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 18 tokens to every session and 561 once invoked, about $0.0001 per session on Opus 5.5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.