subagent

subagent is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from jasonkneen/lazar. It costs 103 tokens per session (867 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A controlled way to delegate a task to a separate Lazar sub-agent. A sub-agent is another agent process that works on an isolated task and can produce a file deliverable.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it for isolated tasks with a file output, context-heavy work, or multiple independent tasks that can run separately. It provides scripts for preparing context and starting the sub-agent.
Why use it?
It prevents unsafe or unbounded direct delegation by checking the request, limiting retries and runtime, and verifying claimed results against files.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Written for no agent in particular: nothing here depends on one. Also seen: mentions subagents.

Good fit Use it for isolated tasks with a file output, context-heavy work, or multiple independent tasks that can run separately. It provides scripts for preparing context and starting the sub-agent.

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Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/jasonkneen/lazar/subagent
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.

Any agent
npx skills add jasonkneen/lazar --skill subagent
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/jasonkneen/lazar

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

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 subagent

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/jasonkneen/lazar/subagent.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/jasonkneen/lazar/subagent)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/jasonkneen/lazar/subagent"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/jasonkneen/lazar/subagent.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 103 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 867 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. Third-party audits
  • NVIDIA SkillSpector pass 7 Sept 2026
How audits are shown
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 $0.00103 $0.00867
Opus 5 $0.00051 $0.00434
Sonnet 5 $0.00021 $0.00173
Haiku 4.5 $0.00010 $0.00087

Measured 8d ago against content hash 6c11d7b97d61, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-08, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

subagent 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 8d ago.

The scan reads SKILL.md. This mod also ships 3 executable files (pack-and-spawn.sh, selftest.sh, spawn.sh), listed below but not scanned — reading those needs a real analyzer, not pattern matching.

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.

src/seed-skills/_meta/subagent/SKILL.md · 85 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 85 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

subagent — how I extend myself

Delegation is a core skill. I never call lazar -p directly (a pre-tool hook vetoes it). I go through the locked spawn surface, preferably with a context pack:

# Recommended: BRIEF.md + thin prompt + lazar-spawn
bash "$LAZAR_HOME/skills/_meta/subagent/pack-and-spawn.sh" <task-id> \
  --objective "..." \
  --out /absolute/deliverable \
  --path /absolute/input \
  --skill create-skill \
  --note "user wants terse output"

# Lower-level (already-written prompt file):
bash "$LAZAR_HOME/bin/lazar-spawn" <task-id> <prompt-file>

bin/lazar-spawn is installed by setup.sh with the same immutability story as bin/lazar. Budget state lives in logs/subagent/. The copy under skills/_meta/subagent/spawn.sh is only a re-exec stub.

When to spawn vs do it yourself

Do it yourself (bash in-process) Spawn a child
< ~3 tool steps Isolated unit with a file deliverable
Needs live conversational deixis Context isolation would help the parent
Exploratory one-off 2+ independent units (parallel via agent-dispatch)
Result is just stdout to reason on SUCCESS can be checked on disk

Never wrap every bash call as a subagent — latency and token cost explode.

Context pack (enough context without cloning chat)

Children are strangers with a filesystem. Do not dump parent history. Write workspace/tasks/<id>/BRIEF.md (pack-and-spawn does this) containing:

  1. Imperative objective
  2. Absolute input/output paths
  3. SUCCESS: + EXPECT-VERIFY: claims you author
  4. Relevant skill names (not full INDEX)
  5. ≤ ~20 lines of prior decisions / constraints
  6. Out-of-scope list
  7. RESULT.md protocol (DONE / BLOCKED)

The spawn -p string stays thin and points at the BRIEF.

Gate on the envelope

lazar-spawn re-checks EXPECT-VERIFY and returns {"status":"ok","matched":true} only if claims hold. Trust matched, not child prose. On matched:false, fix the BRIEF and retry within ceilings.

Read the full file on GitHub · 85 lines

Files

What ships with it

3 files beside SKILL.md in the same directory: the scripts, references and assets a skill reads on demand. Not counted in the per-session cost; read them before you install if any of them is executable.

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. 8d ago First seen · 85 lines · 103 tokens per session scan A 6c11d7b97d61

Subscribe to this mod's changes

subagent is a skill published in the GitHub repository jasonkneen/lazar (31 stars, last pushed 26d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 103 tokens to every session and 867 once invoked, about $0.0005 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 2026-08-30.

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