Skip to content
Tools/Official Docs
Official DocsOfficial

Codex Subagents

Official Codex subagent documentation.

Visit source
Reviewed 2026-07-21
Official documentation
Primary source reviewed

Source type: official-docs. License: not stated or not applicable. The linked source supports the visible capability notes but does not prove production suitability.

Open evidence source
Inference or recommendation
Verify before production

Confirm current maintenance, permissions, data handling, license obligations, failure behavior, and a human approval gate in your own environment.

Practical fit

Subagents are useful when work can be divided into clearly owned investigations or when a separate reviewer should remain independent from the maker. Parallelism only helps when the outputs can be reconciled without creating contradictory edits.

For a small task, delegation adds coordination cost and makes the final decision less legible. Use one agent when the work is tightly coupled or when every subtask needs the same context.

How to evaluate it

Can each subagent receive a distinct question and return a bounded artifact?
Who resolves conflicting findings or overlapping file changes?
Does the reviewer have enough independence to reject the maker's result?

Example decision

During a migration, one subagent can inventory deprecated imports while another reads the official upgrade guide. A single owner then combines those findings into the implementation plan instead of letting both agents edit the same files.

Verify before you adopt it

Check current role, context, and tool behavior in the official subagent docs.
Avoid assigning overlapping write scopes in the first run.
Require a final owner to validate the combined result.

Source review note

We reviewed the primary source on July 21, 2026. Product behavior, pricing, licenses, and maintenance status can change, so check the linked source before adopting it.

Best for

Parallel work
Specialized review
Multi-agent workflows

Not for

Simple single-agent tasks

Risk notes

Subagents need clear roles and coordination rules.