# Sub agents vs Agent Teams

> Sub-agents are isolated, parallel workers that keep the orchestrator's context clean. Agent teams are long-running groups sharing state for collaborative work.

Published: 2026-04-23
URL: https://daniliants.com/insights/sub-agents-vs-agent-teams/
Tags: claude-code, multi-agent, sub-agents, agent-teams, parallelism, orchestration, context-window

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## Summary

In Claude Code, sub-agents and agent teams serve fundamentally different purposes. Sub-agents are isolated, single-task workers that run in parallel without polluting the orchestrator's context window. Agent teams are long-running, collaborative groups that share state and respond to each other in real time.

## Key Insight

The core decision rule is simple: isolated work -> sub-agents, collaborative work -> agent team.

**Sub-agents:**

- Each runs in its own context window, keeping the main orchestrator clean
- Fire-and-forget: give a task, they complete it, return result
- Key advantage: parallelism, you can run multiple sub-agents simultaneously for independent tasks
- Best for: parallel file processing, multi-source research, running several independent pipelines at once

**Agent teams:**

- Long-running, they persist across tasks, not just one job
- Can directly communicate with each other and react to peer progress in real time
- Build shared context over time (useful for iterative, dependent work)
- Typical structure: lead agent + working agents + shared task state
- Best for: complex projects where agent A's output feeds agent B, or where real-time coordination matters

**Practical decision heuristic (straight from the clip):**

- 3+ independent subtasks -> sub-agents, fire in parallel in the same message block
- Tasks depend on each other or need coordination -> agent team