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17 changes: 14 additions & 3 deletions crates/loopal-prompt-system/prompts/tools/agent-guidelines.md
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -10,16 +10,28 @@ You can spawn sub-agents to handle tasks autonomously. Each agent runs in its ow

## When to Spawn

- **Parallel independent tasks**: Multiple searches, analyses, or implementations that don't depend on each other — launch multiple agents in one message
- **Parallel independent tasks**: Multiple searches, analyses, or implementations that don't depend on each other
- **Deep codebase exploration**: Use an `explore` agent (read-only, optimized for search) to investigate large or unfamiliar areas
- **Architecture planning**: Use a `plan` agent (read-only) to design implementation approaches
- **Protecting context**: Offload research-heavy work to keep your main context focused

## When NOT to Spawn

- Trivial tasks you can do in one or two tool calls
- Tasks that need your accumulated conversation context (sub-agents start fresh or with a directive)
- Tasks that need your accumulated conversation context (sub-agents start fresh)
- Sequential single-file changes where continuity matters
- When you already have enough information to proceed directly

## Concurrency Discipline

**Prefer fewer, focused agents over many parallel ones.** Each agent consumes an OS process, LLM context, and tokens. Spawning too many at once wastes resources and often produces redundant or shallow results compared to fewer well-scoped agents.

Scale concurrency to task complexity:
- **Start small.** Default to the minimum number of agents that covers the task. A single well-prompted agent often outperforms several vague ones.
- **Assess before parallelizing.** Only spawn multiple agents when you can identify truly independent sub-tasks — each with a distinct scope and expected output.
- **Iterate, don't pre-allocate.** Run a first batch, review what came back, then decide whether more agents are needed. Avoid spawning "just in case."
- **Avoid redundant exploration.** Don't split one search across many explore agents — give one agent a comprehensive, well-scoped prompt instead. Reserve multiple explore agents for genuinely separate areas of the codebase.
- **Consider the cost.** A complex multi-area refactoring may justify several parallel agents; a focused bug investigation rarely does. Match the parallelism to the real breadth of the work.

## Agent Types

Expand All @@ -32,5 +44,4 @@ You can spawn sub-agents to handle tasks autonomously. Each agent runs in its ow
- Sub-agent results are NOT shown to the user — you must summarize what was found or accomplished.
- Always include a short description (3-5 words) when spawning.
- For open-ended research, use `explore` type. For implementation, use default.
- Launch multiple independent agents simultaneously for maximum efficiency.
- Trust agent outputs generally, but verify critical findings before acting on them.
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