subagent-driven-development

A way to carry out an implementation plan by assigning each independent task to a fresh coding agent, reviewing that task, and then reviewing the completed branch.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it for multi-step implementation work where tasks can be handled independently and need task-level and final reviews.
Why use it?
It keeps each task focused and adds separate checks for following the specification, code quality, and overall branch health.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Part of the superpowers plugin — 14 skills, 1 hook shipped together

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/smallocean43658/codex-superpowers/subagent-driven-development
Any agent
npx skills add smallocean43658/codex-superpowers --skill subagent-driven-development
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/smallocean43658/codex-superpowers

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Or install superpowers, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 14 skills, 1 hook.

Per session 17 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 4,843 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
Origin 100% copy Near-identical to another mod 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 $0.04843
Opus 5 $0.00009 $0.02422
Sonnet 5 $0.00003 $0.00969
Haiku 4.5 $0.00002 $0.00484

Measured 3d ago against content hash 41ab239a6ad1, 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 3d 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.

Origin

This is a copy

100% identical to subagent-driven-development — 0 lines differ, which has more behind it and is treated as the original. This page carries a canonical link to it rather than competing with it.

skills/subagent-driven-development/SKILL.md · 419 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 419 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Subagent-Driven Development

Execute plan by dispatching a fresh implementer subagent per task, a task review (spec compliance + code quality) after each, and a broad whole-branch review at the end.

Why subagents: You delegate tasks to specialized agents with isolated context. By precisely crafting their instructions and context, you ensure they stay focused and succeed at their task. They should never inherit your session's context or history — you construct exactly what they need. This also preserves your own context for coordination work.

Core principle: Fresh subagent per task + task review (spec + quality) + broad final review = high quality, fast iteration

Narration: between tool calls, narrate at most one short line — the ledger and the tool results carry the record.

Continuous execution: Do not pause to check in with your human partner between tasks. Execute all tasks from the plan without stopping. The only reasons to stop are: BLOCKED status you cannot resolve, ambiguity that genuinely prevents progress, or all tasks complete. "Should I continue?" prompts and progress summaries waste their time — they asked you to execute the plan, so execute it.

When to Use

digraph when_to_use {
    "Have implementation plan?" [shape=diamond];
    "Tasks mostly independent?" [shape=diamond];
    "Stay in this session?" [shape=diamond];
    "subagent-driven-development" [shape=box];
    "executing-plans" [shape=box];
    "Manual execution or brainstorm first" [shape=box];

    "Have implementation plan?" -> "Tasks mostly independent?" [label="yes"];
    "Have implementation plan?" -> "Manual execution or brainstorm first" [label="no"];
    "Tasks mostly independent?" -> "Stay in this session?" [label="yes"];
    "Tasks mostly independent?" -> "Manual execution or brainstorm first" [label="no - tightly coupled"];
    "Stay in this session?" -> "subagent-driven-development" [label="yes"];
    "Stay in this session?" -> "executing-plans" [label="no - parallel session"];
}

Read the full file on GitHub · 419 lines

Files

What ships with it

5 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. 3d ago First seen · 419 lines · 17 tokens per session scan A 41ab239a6ad1

Subscribe to this mod's changes

subagent-driven-development is a skill published in the GitHub repository smallocean43658/codex-superpowers (6 stars, last pushed 1mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 17 tokens to every session and 4,843 once invoked, about $0.0001 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. It is 100% identical to subagent-driven-development, differing in 0 lines, and is treated as a copy.

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