HELPER 06 · DELEGATION TAX

Five agents, one parent context

Each subagent result stacks in the parent. The subagent's context is disposable; its result is permanent.

Stacked bar: five subagent results accumulating in parent context A stacked horizontal bar showing five agents each contributing 3-8K tokens to the parent context. Total: approximately 25K tokens that persist for the rest of the session. Below, a comparison showing each agent's own context was discarded after completion. What stays in the parent context Each colored segment is one agent's return value explore critic-1 critic-2 critic-3 executor 8K 5K 6K 3K 3K = 25K tok 0 10K 20K 30K 40K Tokens persisting in parent context What each agent actually processed (discarded) The agent's own file reads, reasoning, drafts — gone when it finishes explore: ~40K internal discarded critic-1: ~20K internal discarded critic-2: ~24K internal discarded critic-3: ~15K internal discarded executor: ~30K internal discarded 129K processed, 25K taxed — the 25K rides along forever The agents' internal work was cheap. Their results are the ongoing cost.
Agent results in parent
25K tok
Permanent until session ends
Agent internal (discarded)
129K tok
Gone when each agent finishes
Carrying cost / 20 turns
500K tok
25K reprocessed 20 times = $7.50