How to use Claude Code subagents to parallelize development

Posted by zachwills 9/9/2025

How to use Claude Code subagents to parallelize development(zachwills.net)

288 points | 128 commentspage 2

serendipityAI 9/13/2025|

I built this tool https://github.com/btree1970/variant-ui where you can use a sub-agent to spin up multiple branches with different code changes into the UI and compare them side by side in the browser.

alxh 9/13/2025||

How do you not get lost mentally in what is exactly happening at each point in time? Just trusting the system and reviewing the final output? I feel like my cognitive constraints become the limits of this parallelized system. With a single workstream I pollute context, but feel way more secure somehow.

rufasterisco 9/13/2025||

i suppose, gradually and the suddenly? each "fix" to incorrect reasoning/solution doesn't just solve the current instance, it also ends up in a rule-based system that will be used in future

initially, being in the loop is necessary, once you find yourself "just approving" you can be relaxed and think back or, more likely, initially you need fine-grained tasks; as reliability grows, tasks can become more complex

"parallelizing" allows single (sub)agents with ad-hoc responsibilities to rely on separate "institutionalized" context/rules, .ie: architecture-agent and coder-agent can talk to each others and solve a decision-conflict based on wether one is making the decision based on concrete rules you have added, or hallucinating decisions

i have seen a friend build a rule based system and have been impressed at how well LLM work within that context

jondwillis 9/13/2025||

Until your rules get poisoned…

zachwills 9/15/2025|||

I think that is the whole point. The new limiting factor is going to be our own ability to multitask effectively. It will be a new skill to hone.

ares623 9/13/2025||

Just one more agent...

siva7 9/13/2025||

Let's ask the obvious question: Is there any hard evidence that subagent flows give actual developers better experience than just using CC without?

awb 9/14/2025|

Judging by the lack of responses and my own experience: no.

Most subagent examples are vague or simplistic.

raminf 9/13/2025||

Was going to ask how much all this cost, but this sort of answers it:

> "Managing Cost and Usage Limits: Chaining agents, especially in a loop, will increase your token usage significantly. This means you’ll hit the usage caps on plans like Claude Pro/Max much faster. You need to be cognizant of this and decide if the trade-off—dramatically increased output and velocity at the cost of higher usage—is worth it."

d4rkp4ttern 9/14/2025||

The biggest issue with sub-agents and even the CC Task tool is that they are black boxes, and we can’t see what’s going on inside them and cannot intervene. I’ve instead often found it better to leverage Tmux and have CC send messages to another CLI-agent (could be CC or the other now-surging CC, i.e., Codex-CLI, or of course any other competent CLI-agent) running in another pane. To make this smoother I built this Tmux-cli command that CC can use:

https://github.com/pchalasani/claude-code-tools/tree/main?ta...

If the first CLI-agent just needs a review or suggestions of approaches, I find it helps to have the first agent ask the other CLI-agent to dump its analysis into a markdown file which it can then look at.

agigao 9/13/2025||

One can hardly control one coding agent for correctness, let alone multiple ones... It's cool, but not very reliable or useful.

siva7 9/13/2025||

It's resume driven development

diggan 9/13/2025||

> One can hardly control one coding agent for correctness

Why not? I'm assuming we're not talking about "vibe coding" as it's not a serious workflow, it was suggested as a joke basically, and we're talking about working together with LLMs. Why would correctness be any harder to achieve than programming without them?

tharkun__ 9/13/2025||

Because they output so much code. It's a wall.

Using a coding agent can make your entire work day turn into doing nothing but code reviews. I.e. the least fun part: constant review of a junior dev that's on the brink of failing their probation period with random strokes of genius.

chandureddyvari 9/14/2025||

There were other HN posts suggesting BMAD, ccpm, conductor, etc. I considered giving it a try. They were quite comprehensive, to the point where I was exhausted reading all the documentation they’ve generated before coding - product requirements, epics, user stories/journeys, tasks, analysis, architecture, project plans.

The idea was to encapsulate the context for a subagent to work on in a single GitHub issue/document. I’m yet to see how the development/QA subagents will fare in real-world scenarios by relying on the context in the GitHub issue.

Like many others here, I believe subagents will starve for context. Claude Code Agent is context-rich, while claude subagents are context-poor.

simianwords 9/13/2025||

Slightly off topic but I would really like agentic workflow that is embedded in my IDE as well as my code host provider like GitHub for pull requests.

Ideally I would like to spin off multiple agents to solve multiple bugs or features. The agents have to use the ci in GitHub to get feedback on tests. And I would like to view it on IDE because I like the ability to understand code by jumping through definitions.

Support for multiple branches at once - I should be able to spin off multiple agents that work on multiple branches simultaneously.

posix86 9/13/2025||

This already exists. Look at cursor with Linear, you can just reply with @cursor & some instructions and it starts working in a vm. You can watch it work on cursor.com/agents or using the cursor editor. Result is a PR. Also github has copilot getting integrated in the github ui, but not that great in my experience

Jare 9/13/2025|||

Would that be solved by having several clones of your repo, each with a IDE and a Claude working on each problem? Much like how multiple people work in parallel.

simianwords 9/13/2025||

Yeah but it’s not ideal. I thought of this too.

muratsu 9/13/2025||

Why not just use only async agents? You can fire off many tasks and check PRs locally when they complete the work. (I also work on devfleet.ai to improve this experience, any feedback is appreciated)

user1999919 9/13/2025||

as much as ai has been a boon to my own development i writhe at the thought of middle managers oversold on the promise of ai and its output, making unrealistic requests and demanding 'MORE PRODUCTIVITY' at the greater cost of making more work in the future. Diluting code-as-craft, and commodifying it down to shovels of coal into the furnace.

wrs 9/13/2025|

These prompts remind me of the YouTubers giving people self-actualization advice. “Act like the person you want to be!” Telling the LLM that it is an experienced product manager doesn’t make it an experienced product manager, it just makes it sound like one. This is like launching an entire team of “fake it til you make it” employees.

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