subagent-driven-development

A coding workflow for carrying out a plan by giving each independent task to a newly started helper, then reviewing the result for requirements and code quality.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it when an implementation plan has several independent coding tasks in the same session. It helps build, review, and refine each task in sequence.
Why use it?
It separates tasks and adds checks after each one, reducing errors that can spread through a larger implementation.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

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.

agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/dr-code/tessera/subagent-driven-development
Any agent
npx skills add dr-code/tessera --skill subagent-driven-development
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/dr-code/tessera

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 17 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 934 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
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 $0.00017 $0.00934
Opus 5 $0.00009 $0.00467
Sonnet 5 $0.00003 $0.00187
Haiku 4.5 $0.00002 $0.00093

Measured yesterday against content hash fba293d1adae, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

subagent-driven-development 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 yesterday.

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.

skills/subagent-driven-development/SKILL.md · 124 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 124 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Subagent-Driven Development

Execute plan by dispatching fresh subagent per task, with two-stage review after each: spec compliance review first, then code quality review.

Core principle: Fresh subagent per task + two-stage review = high quality, fast iteration.

Continuous execution: Do not pause between tasks unless BLOCKED, genuinely ambiguous, or all tasks complete.

When to Use

Use when you have a written implementation plan with independent tasks and want to stay in the current session. For parallel-session execution, use executing-plans instead.

Tessera Coordinator Discipline

At the start of each dispatch round (before dispatching any subagent) — if tessera MCP is configured:

1. graph_continue (mandatory first call for the coordinator too)
2. graph_retrieve with the current task's key terms

This keeps the coordinator's routing accurate as files change during execution.

Tessera Subagent Discipline

Every implementer subagent prompt you dispatch MUST include these instructions:

Tessera graph policy (if tessera MCP is configured in this session):
1. Call graph_continue as your FIRST tool call
2. Call graph_retrieve with this task's key terms
3. Read all recommended_files via graph_read before exploring
4. After each file edit, call graph_register_edit with file::symbol notation
   - If graph_continue returned an active_checklist, include the checklist_item_id
     for the task you just completed
5. Call graph_lock_decision when you make an architectural choice

This ensures Tessera's compliance tracker stays updated as each subagent works.

The Process

Per Task Loop

  1. Dispatch implementer subagent
    • Craft a focused, self-contained prompt with exactly the context needed
    • Include the Tessera graph policy block above
    • Include the specific task steps, file paths, and expected test outcomes
    • Include: "Do NOT inherit session history. Work only from this prompt."

Read the full file on GitHub · 124 lines

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. yesterday First seen · 124 lines · 17 tokens per session scan A fba293d1adae

Subscribe to this mod's changes

subagent-driven-development is a skill published in the GitHub repository dr-code/tessera (1 stars, last pushed 21d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 17 tokens to every session and 934 once invoked, about $0.0001 per session on Opus 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 2026-08-31.

Related

Other skills, from other repositories

systematic-debugging

Use when encountering any bug, test failure, or unexpected behavior, before proposing fixes.

obra/superpowers · 21 tokens

next-cache-components-adoption

Turn on Cache Components in a Next.js app and resolve the blocking routes it surfaces. Use when the user wants to enable, adopt, or migrate to Cache Components, flip the cacheComponents flag, work through a flood of blocking-prerender / instant validation errors, run the cache-components-instant-false codemod, or…

vercel/next.js · 95 tokens

babysit-pr

Babysit a GitHub pull request after creation by continuously polling review comments, CI checks/workflow runs, and mergeability state until the PR is merged/closed or user help is required. Diagnose failures, retry likely flaky failures up to 3 times, auto-fix/push branch-related issues when appropriate, and keep…

openai/codex · 114 tokens

imagegen

Generate or edit raster images when the task benefits from AI-created bitmap visuals such as photos, illustrations, textures, sprites, mockups, or transparent-background cutouts. Use when Codex should create a brand-new image, transform an existing image, or derive visual variants from references, and the output…

openai/codex · 113 tokens

cpu-profile-analysis

Analyze V8/Chrome CPU profiles (.cpuprofile) and DevTools trace files (Trace-.json). Use when: profiling performance, investigating slow functions, comparing code paths, finding bottlenecks, analyzing timeToRequest, understanding call trees from sampling profiler data, analyzing layout/paint/rendering, investigating…

microsoft/vscode · 71 tokens

next-cache-components-optimizer

Drive a Next.js route to instant navigation by setting up an agentic loop, under Cache Components / PPR, on initial load (hard navigation) and client-side navigation (soft navigation). Encode the goal as a failing @next/playwright instant() e2e and work it to green, one verified route at a time; the shipped test then…

vercel/next.js · 170 tokens