Subagent vs Team Agent: The Real Difference

Opus 4.6 introduced Team Agents. Many missed the nuance.

Subagent

One agent delegates a subtask to another and gets the result back. Hierarchical. A boss sending an employee to handle something specific.

Team Agent

Multiple agents collaborate together, without hierarchy. They exchange ideas, correct each other, and iterate together.

When to use what?

• Subagent → decomposable task, single decision-maker
• Team Agent → complex task where confrontation improves the result

Real-world example

I opened up YouThumb.ai via REST APIs with a team of 4 agents: a Team Lead, a back-end dev, a front-end dev, and a QA.

One shot. Under 15 minutes.

The Team Lead orchestrates, the back-end builds endpoints, the front-end hooks up the UI, QA validates. Each one challenges the others in real time.

🎬 Watch the full process