Description
When the main session uses a large-context model (e.g., Opus 4 with 1M context window), invoking a subagent with a fixed smaller-context model fails because the subagent cannot hold the parent session's accumulated context.
Current Behavior
45 of 48 agents are configured with fixed models:
- \model: sonnet\ (31 agents - leads, programmers, designers, specialists)
- \model: haiku\ (3 agents - community-manager, devops-engineer, sound-designer, etc.)
Only 3 director agents use \model: opus.
When the parent session (Opus, 1M context) accumulates significant context and invokes a Sonnet subagent, the context transfer exceeds the subagent's context window, causing errors.
Expected Behavior
Subagents should inherit the parent session's model by default, avoiding context window truncation.
Proposed Solution
Change all non-director agents from fixed models to \model: inherit:
- Keep \model: opus\ for 3 directors (creative-director, technical-director, producer) — these roles make high-stakes strategic decisions that justify the strongest model
- Change all remaining agents (45 files) to \model: inherit\ — inheriting the parent session's model
This mirrors the approach used by the Superpowers project (\model: inherit\ for code-reviewer agent), which avoids this class of context-transfer failures entirely.
Impact
- No more context window overflow errors when using large-context models
- Lightweight tasks still run efficiently (parent model determines, not the agent)
- Directors remain explicitly marked as Opus-tier roles
Description
When the main session uses a large-context model (e.g., Opus 4 with 1M context window), invoking a subagent with a fixed smaller-context model fails because the subagent cannot hold the parent session's accumulated context.
Current Behavior
45 of 48 agents are configured with fixed models:
Only 3 director agents use \model: opus.
When the parent session (Opus, 1M context) accumulates significant context and invokes a Sonnet subagent, the context transfer exceeds the subagent's context window, causing errors.
Expected Behavior
Subagents should inherit the parent session's model by default, avoiding context window truncation.
Proposed Solution
Change all non-director agents from fixed models to \model: inherit:
This mirrors the approach used by the Superpowers project (\model: inherit\ for code-reviewer agent), which avoids this class of context-transfer failures entirely.
Impact