6 ms·

Claude Code introduces specialized sub-agents

161 points by tekkertje 1y ago

physarum_salad 1y ago
[dead]
T0Bi 1y ago
So everything claude-flow¹ already does but worse (I guess?). ¹ https://github.com/ruvnet/claude-flow https://github.com/ruvnet/claude-flow
- nazgul17 1y ago
  Except it's not in alpha phase
- dchuk 1y ago
  I’ll admit this looks comprehensive, but man oh man does this seem complicated and over doing it
- himeexcelanta 1y ago
  This looks like a yarn ball (in not a good way)
- SOLAR_FIELDS 1y ago
  That guy doesn't even understand how his own software works. Is anyone actually using this thing and putting their code into production?
  - lubujackson 1y ago
    It's extreme dogfooding where he is making a mashed potato volcano where Claude agents are the potatoes and your sanity is the gravy.
  - AbstractH24 1y ago
    Not only are people using them, they are building startups based on them. And then selling said startups.
- jampa 1y ago
  > IMPORTANT: Claude Code must be installed first: > [...] > # 2. Activate Claude Code with permissions > claude --dangerously-skip-permissions Bypassing all permissions and connecting with MCPs, can't wait for "Claude flow deleted all my files and leaked my CI credentials" blog post
  - data-ottawa 1y ago
    I would like a simple tool to run Claude in a container with only read/write access to provided folders. I’ve set it up bespoke but the auth flow gets broken.
    - oarsinsync 1y ago
      Have you considered asking Claude code to write this for you?
    - T0Bi 1y ago
      I use the .devcontainer¹ from the claude-code repository. It works great with VSC and let's you work in your docker container without any issues. And as long as you use some sort of version control (git) you cannot really lose anything. ¹ https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/tree/main/.devcontainer https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/tree/main/.devcont...
      - deleted 1y ago
        [deleted]
    - SOLAR_FIELDS 1y ago
      Claudebox is what I was playing with. You need to mount the oauth access token in as an env. It’s not some crazy vibe coded framework, just around 1k lines of shell helpers to set it up.
    - beefnugs 1y ago
      This is the main problem with all the AI stuff, you really need: whitelist only network isolation, idempotent clean virtual machine creation and cleanup, automated git branches and merging strategies, full chain multi host logging to an external log collector (when something unexpected happens to should be able to review an entire event log of where it went wrong so you can improve), social-graph like tracking of what works and what doesn't, constant background model testing (to detect when censorship is going to bite you) or when a new better model for quality for cost effectiveness can be swapped in, anything background like agents needs an orchestrator so you can set up daily or weekly budgets to try and keep a handle on costs, some defined methodology to reduce long running agent based production down to actual reliable code on an ongoing basis The tooling required for any of this to approach actual engineering reliability levels is unbelievable really
- dazzaji 1y ago
  Ruv (of Claude Flow) seems to like the new Claude Agents a lot, and already is leveraging them in Claude Flow. He waxes positively on the topic here: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/reuvencohen_spent-the-afternoon-digging-into-claude-code-activity-7354702830080839682-tnuH https://www.linkedin.com/posts/reuvencohen_spent-the-afterno...
- lvl155 1y ago
  What did you make me read. Right off the bat, it says v2 alpha. Bro…
bomewish 1y ago
Has CC become much stupider in recent weeks, or is it me? Any anecdata out there?
- illusive4080 1y ago
  Not for me. It gets worse when context is nearly full. I like to compact or clear context more often than it does automatically.
  - nico 1y ago
    Do you do this via settings or just keep track of it and manually ask it to do it more often?
    - furyofantares 1y ago
      (Not the person you're responding to, but) It says how close it is to compacting in bottom right, once it's getting close at least (30% left or something?) Whenever I see that I think about whether I can find a good point to compact or clear. I also just try to clear whenever it makes sense to avoid getting there and try to give smaller tasks that can be cleared after they're done when possible. Oh, I guess one thing I do is sometimes have it write a file with what was done, if I'm not actually sure if I want to clear or might want to come back to it. I also sometimes do this rather than compact during a large task - document status and clear.
  - yumraj 1y ago
    I’ve thought about that but always forget, good to know it helps. I wish there were a way to persist in-memory context in a file automatically, say on each compact or git commit. Yesterday CC crashed and restarting it and feeding it all the context was a pain since my updated Claude.md file was a couple of days old. It literally went from a Sr Engineer to a Jr post crash.
    - jswny 1y ago
      You can do that with hooks! Make a small script that triggers on a commit tool use or a compact hook and reads the conversation file (should be available via inputs to the hook) and back it up somewhere
Dlanv 1y ago
I wonder if this is also a good way to create experts for specific tasks/features of a codebase. For example, a sub-agent for adding a new stat to an RPG. It could know how to integrate with various systems like items, character stats component, metrics, and so on without having to do as much research into the codebase patterns.
pjm331 1y ago
I've made a few attempts at manually doing this w/ mcp and took a brief look at "claude swarm" https://github.com/parruda/claude-swarm https://github.com/parruda/claude-swarm - but in the short time I spent on it I wasn't having much success - admittedly I probably went a little too far into the "build an entire org chart of agents" territory the main problem I have is that the agents just aren't used For example, I set up a code reviewer agent today and then asked claude to review code, and it went off and did it by itself without using the agent in one of anthropic's own examples they are specifically telling claude which agents to use which is exactly what I don't want to have to do: > First use the code-analyzer sub agent to find performance issues, then use the optimizer sub agent to fix them My working theory is that while Claude has been extensively trained on tool use and is often eager to use whatever tools are available, agents are just different enough that they don't quite fit - maybe asking another agent to do something "feels" very close to asking the user to do something, which is counter to their training but maybe I just haven't spent enough time trying it out and tweaking the descriptions
- conception 1y ago
  Roo code does this really well with their orchestration mode, there’s probably a way to have a claude.md to do this as well. The only issue with roo is it’s “single threaded” but you do get the specific loaded context and rules for a specific task which is really nice.
  - flixing 1y ago
    I find roo code much inferior to claude code tbh. It's night and day for my use cases
- oc1 1y ago
  the same problem with mcp. as well as claude md. most of the time they aren't used when it would be appropriate. what's the point of this agents and standards when you can't make them reliably being used by your model..
- yumraj 1y ago
  What’s one use case where someone would do this? Very curious.
Garlef 1y ago
One nice realization I had when using a similar feature in roo: You don't need a full agent library to write LLM workflows. Rather: A general purpose agent with a custom addition to the system prompt can be instructed to call other such agents. (Of course explicitly mamaging everything is the better choice depending on your business case. But i think it would be always cheaper to at least build a prototype using this method.)
lvl155 1y ago
Here my main problem with sub-agents WITHIN Claude Code. They don’t allow you to use other models. Let’s be honest it’s 99% Sonnet.
- stillsut 1y ago
  Great point, I've found Sonnet really can't be beat on many tasks, but increasingly finding Gemini-Pro and o3 handle the tough bugs and refactors best. That's why I've been using agro to launch agents from each of the main LLM vendors and checking their results when I'm stuck: https://github.com/sutt/agro/blob/master/docs/index.md https://github.com/sutt/agro/blob/master/docs/index.md
  - flixing 1y ago
    Opus is the opposite. Incredibly smart and better than everything else
- furyofantares 1y ago
  I haven't used them yet but it says they can use MCPs. The only MCP server I use is zen-mcp-server for routing stuff to o3 and gemini.
  - lvl155 1y ago
    But that’s added layer and slow, no? Wouldn’t something like Opencode be a better option? You can pick anything out of major providers.
    - furyofantares 1y ago
      I haven't tried opencode, but I am very happy with claude code overall, and most of what I do is with opus. When I'm using zen to route to o3/gemini it's usually for a more difficult task that I don't mind taking longer anyway - I'm usually telling it to get solutions from both o3 and gemini pro and then to use o3 to evaluate which is better. I don't think the added layer of claude choosing to use the tools is really adding much here, claude picking tools is a lot faster than o3 writing code.
mortsnort 1y ago
It says they can be "fine tuned," but it looks like the agents are all using the same model with different system prompts? This would be more intriguing if they trained a debugger model from the ground up that could be used for the debugger agent. I suspect we'll get there eventually.
- retinaros 1y ago
  words have no meaning in LLM. agents, fine tuning, reasoning all have millions of definitions
- anuramat 1y ago
  you can specify the model in the yaml frontmatter, so at least with litellm it should be possible
jbentley1 1y ago
This is great. I hope that they expose the configuration through the SDK, but right now it works with Crystal (https://github.com/stravu/crystal https://github.com/stravu/crystal) if you configure them in the CLI. I'm working on a proper config screen for them that just modifies the agent files directly, and a future release will also give special formatting for agent output.
necatiozmen 1y ago
We've prepared a comprehensive collection of production-ready Claude Code subagents: https://github.com/VoltAgent/awesome-claude-code-subagents https://github.com/VoltAgent/awesome-claude-code-subagents It contains 100+ specialized agents covering the most requested development tasks - frontend, backend, DevOps, AI/ML, code review, debugging, and more. All subagents follow best practices and are maintained by the open-source framework community. Just copy to .claude/agents/ in your project to start using them.

161 points by tekkertje 1y ago

[dead]

T0Bi 1y ago

So everything claude-flow¹ already does but worse (I guess?). ¹ https://github.com/ruvnet/claude-flow https://github.com/ruvnet/claude-flow

nazgul17 1y ago
Except it's not in alpha phase
dchuk 1y ago
I’ll admit this looks comprehensive, but man oh man does this seem complicated and over doing it
himeexcelanta 1y ago
This looks like a yarn ball (in not a good way)
SOLAR_FIELDS 1y ago
That guy doesn't even understand how his own software works. Is anyone actually using this thing and putting their code into production?
- lubujackson 1y ago
  It's extreme dogfooding where he is making a mashed potato volcano where Claude agents are the potatoes and your sanity is the gravy.
- AbstractH24 1y ago
  Not only are people using them, they are building startups based on them. And then selling said startups.
jampa 1y ago
> IMPORTANT: Claude Code must be installed first: > [...] > # 2. Activate Claude Code with permissions > claude --dangerously-skip-permissions Bypassing all permissions and connecting with MCPs, can't wait for "Claude flow deleted all my files and leaked my CI credentials" blog post
- data-ottawa 1y ago
  I would like a simple tool to run Claude in a container with only read/write access to provided folders. I’ve set it up bespoke but the auth flow gets broken.
  - oarsinsync 1y ago
    Have you considered asking Claude code to write this for you?
  - T0Bi 1y ago
    I use the .devcontainer¹ from the claude-code repository. It works great with VSC and let's you work in your docker container without any issues. And as long as you use some sort of version control (git) you cannot really lose anything. ¹ https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/tree/main/.devcontainer https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/tree/main/.devcont...
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
  - SOLAR_FIELDS 1y ago
    Claudebox is what I was playing with. You need to mount the oauth access token in as an env. It’s not some crazy vibe coded framework, just around 1k lines of shell helpers to set it up.
  - beefnugs 1y ago
    This is the main problem with all the AI stuff, you really need: whitelist only network isolation, idempotent clean virtual machine creation and cleanup, automated git branches and merging strategies, full chain multi host logging to an external log collector (when something unexpected happens to should be able to review an entire event log of where it went wrong so you can improve), social-graph like tracking of what works and what doesn't, constant background model testing (to detect when censorship is going to bite you) or when a new better model for quality for cost effectiveness can be swapped in, anything background like agents needs an orchestrator so you can set up daily or weekly budgets to try and keep a handle on costs, some defined methodology to reduce long running agent based production down to actual reliable code on an ongoing basis The tooling required for any of this to approach actual engineering reliability levels is unbelievable really
dazzaji 1y ago
Ruv (of Claude Flow) seems to like the new Claude Agents a lot, and already is leveraging them in Claude Flow. He waxes positively on the topic here: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/reuvencohen_spent-the-afternoon-digging-into-claude-code-activity-7354702830080839682-tnuH https://www.linkedin.com/posts/reuvencohen_spent-the-afterno...
lvl155 1y ago
What did you make me read. Right off the bat, it says v2 alpha. Bro…

bomewish 1y ago

Has CC become much stupider in recent weeks, or is it me? Any anecdata out there?

illusive4080 1y ago
Not for me. It gets worse when context is nearly full. I like to compact or clear context more often than it does automatically.
- nico 1y ago
  Do you do this via settings or just keep track of it and manually ask it to do it more often?
  - furyofantares 1y ago
    (Not the person you're responding to, but) It says how close it is to compacting in bottom right, once it's getting close at least (30% left or something?) Whenever I see that I think about whether I can find a good point to compact or clear. I also just try to clear whenever it makes sense to avoid getting there and try to give smaller tasks that can be cleared after they're done when possible. Oh, I guess one thing I do is sometimes have it write a file with what was done, if I'm not actually sure if I want to clear or might want to come back to it. I also sometimes do this rather than compact during a large task - document status and clear.
- yumraj 1y ago
  I’ve thought about that but always forget, good to know it helps. I wish there were a way to persist in-memory context in a file automatically, say on each compact or git commit. Yesterday CC crashed and restarting it and feeding it all the context was a pain since my updated Claude.md file was a couple of days old. It literally went from a Sr Engineer to a Jr post crash.
  - jswny 1y ago
    You can do that with hooks! Make a small script that triggers on a commit tool use or a compact hook and reads the conversation file (should be available via inputs to the hook) and back it up somewhere

Dlanv 1y ago

I wonder if this is also a good way to create experts for specific tasks/features of a codebase. For example, a sub-agent for adding a new stat to an RPG. It could know how to integrate with various systems like items, character stats component, metrics, and so on without having to do as much research into the codebase patterns.

pjm331 1y ago

I've made a few attempts at manually doing this w/ mcp and took a brief look at "claude swarm" https://github.com/parruda/claude-swarm https://github.com/parruda/claude-swarm - but in the short time I spent on it I wasn't having much success - admittedly I probably went a little too far into the "build an entire org chart of agents" territory the main problem I have is that the agents just aren't used For example, I set up a code reviewer agent today and then asked claude to review code, and it went off and did it by itself without using the agent in one of anthropic's own examples they are specifically telling claude which agents to use which is exactly what I don't want to have to do: > First use the code-analyzer sub agent to find performance issues, then use the optimizer sub agent to fix them My working theory is that while Claude has been extensively trained on tool use and is often eager to use whatever tools are available, agents are just different enough that they don't quite fit - maybe asking another agent to do something "feels" very close to asking the user to do something, which is counter to their training but maybe I just haven't spent enough time trying it out and tweaking the descriptions

conception 1y ago
Roo code does this really well with their orchestration mode, there’s probably a way to have a claude.md to do this as well. The only issue with roo is it’s “single threaded” but you do get the specific loaded context and rules for a specific task which is really nice.
- flixing 1y ago
  I find roo code much inferior to claude code tbh. It's night and day for my use cases
oc1 1y ago
the same problem with mcp. as well as claude md. most of the time they aren't used when it would be appropriate. what's the point of this agents and standards when you can't make them reliably being used by your model..
yumraj 1y ago
What’s one use case where someone would do this? Very curious.

Garlef 1y ago

One nice realization I had when using a similar feature in roo: You don't need a full agent library to write LLM workflows. Rather: A general purpose agent with a custom addition to the system prompt can be instructed to call other such agents. (Of course explicitly mamaging everything is the better choice depending on your business case. But i think it would be always cheaper to at least build a prototype using this method.)

lvl155 1y ago

Here my main problem with sub-agents WITHIN Claude Code. They don’t allow you to use other models. Let’s be honest it’s 99% Sonnet.

stillsut 1y ago
Great point, I've found Sonnet really can't be beat on many tasks, but increasingly finding Gemini-Pro and o3 handle the tough bugs and refactors best. That's why I've been using agro to launch agents from each of the main LLM vendors and checking their results when I'm stuck: https://github.com/sutt/agro/blob/master/docs/index.md https://github.com/sutt/agro/blob/master/docs/index.md
- flixing 1y ago
  Opus is the opposite. Incredibly smart and better than everything else
furyofantares 1y ago
I haven't used them yet but it says they can use MCPs. The only MCP server I use is zen-mcp-server for routing stuff to o3 and gemini.
- lvl155 1y ago
  But that’s added layer and slow, no? Wouldn’t something like Opencode be a better option? You can pick anything out of major providers.
  - furyofantares 1y ago
    I haven't tried opencode, but I am very happy with claude code overall, and most of what I do is with opus. When I'm using zen to route to o3/gemini it's usually for a more difficult task that I don't mind taking longer anyway - I'm usually telling it to get solutions from both o3 and gemini pro and then to use o3 to evaluate which is better. I don't think the added layer of claude choosing to use the tools is really adding much here, claude picking tools is a lot faster than o3 writing code.

mortsnort 1y ago

It says they can be "fine tuned," but it looks like the agents are all using the same model with different system prompts? This would be more intriguing if they trained a debugger model from the ground up that could be used for the debugger agent. I suspect we'll get there eventually.

retinaros 1y ago
words have no meaning in LLM. agents, fine tuning, reasoning all have millions of definitions
anuramat 1y ago
you can specify the model in the yaml frontmatter, so at least with litellm it should be possible

jbentley1 1y ago

This is great. I hope that they expose the configuration through the SDK, but right now it works with Crystal (https://github.com/stravu/crystal https://github.com/stravu/crystal) if you configure them in the CLI. I'm working on a proper config screen for them that just modifies the agent files directly, and a future release will also give special formatting for agent output.

necatiozmen 1y ago

We've prepared a comprehensive collection of production-ready Claude Code subagents: https://github.com/VoltAgent/awesome-claude-code-subagents https://github.com/VoltAgent/awesome-claude-code-subagents It contains 100+ specialized agents covering the most requested development tasks - frontend, backend, DevOps, AI/ML, code review, debugging, and more. All subagents follow best practices and are maintained by the open-source framework community. Just copy to .claude/agents/ in your project to start using them.