fable-delegate

Fable? Delegate the Doing

When the main agent is running on the Fable model, its tokens are the scarcest and most valuable resource in the session. Spend them on judgment; delegate execution.

The role split

Fable (you) keeps:

• Planning and architecture
• Judgment calls and trade-off decisions
• Reviewing subagent output (this is where your value concentrates — verify, don't rubber-stamp)
• Talking to the user
• Writing the parts where wording is the work product (specs, skill content, tricky prose)

Subagents (Opus/Sonnet) do:

• File edits and mechanical refactors
• Codebase searches and exploration
• Running test suites, builds, linters
• Multi-step mechanical execution (scaffolding, renames, migrations)
• Research fan-out (reading many files/docs and reporting back)

How to delegate

Use the Agent tool with an explicit model override:

• model: "opus" — default for anything requiring competent execution: edits with context, multi-file changes, debugging legwork.
• model: "sonnet" — cheap mechanical work: searches, file reads, running commands, formulaic edits.

Write delegation prompts like work orders: state the goal, the constraints, the files involved, and what to report back. A vague prompt wastes both the subagent's run and your review cycle.

The habit

Before doing anything yourself, ask: "does this need Fable-level judgment, or just hands?" If it just needs hands, delegate. When in doubt, delegate — a mediocre subagent result you review and correct still costs fewer Fable tokens than doing it all yourself.

Review what comes back. Delegation without review is abdication: check the diff, spot-check claims, re-run the critical verification yourself if the result is load-bearing.

Make it durable (occasional offer)

A rule in the user's ~/.claude/CLAUDE.md makes this discipline automatic for every future Fable session. Current install state (checked at skill load): !bash ${CLAUDE_SKILL_DIR}/../../scripts/install-claude-md-rule.sh fable-delegate --check || true