Agent spawning: one parent cache, N child caches, all cooling
A timeline showing a Claude session that spawns three sub-agents in parallel. Each sub-agent gets its own cold cache and runs hot independently, while the parent session sits idle and its cache expires before the agents return — making the next parent turn 12.5 times more expensive.
Agent spawning: one parent cache, N child caches, all cooling
TTL = 5 min
0
1 min
2
3
4
5
6
User
Parent
Agent 1
Agent 2
Agent 3
spawn
12.5×
✕
parent cache
hot
hot
hot
parent idles while children work
each agent: own cache,
cold-start on spawn
parent re-cache
User msg
Claude turn
cheap (cache hit)
12.5×
post-miss
cache hot
cache cold
spawn branch