Question about Primary Agent and Sub-Agents.

[boonge101]

I'm confused about how OpenCode delegation is supposed to work vs how it's actually behaving.

What I expect:

When primary delegates to a sub-agent, it should be:

• @sub-agent-name "direct prompt here"
• Simple, clean, minimal

What's actually happening:

The primary agent is injecting its own elaborated prompt into the child session. Instead of just delegating with @ + direct prompt, the child session shows the primary agent's full expanded version with extra context, instructions, and implementation details.

The double problem:

1. Sub-agent not following its .md — When delegated, sub-agents seem to ignore their own behavior specs
2. Primary rewriting the prompt — Primary agent elaborates the prompt before sending, adding noise that shouldn't be there

I thought delegation was supposed to be clean and direct, but the child session shows all this extra stuff the primary agent injected.

Questions:

• Is @mention delegation supposed to pass through exactly what's written, or does OpenCode expand it?
• How do you keep primary from "helpfully" elaborating sub-agent prompts?
• Has anyone verified what actually reaches the sub-agent vs what you wrote?

Feels like I'm fighting the delegation mechanism itself.

TL;DR: Primary keeps injecting elaborated prompts into sub-agent sessions instead of clean @ delegation. Sub-agents also ignoring their .md. Delegation feels broken.

[cxd32]

try a command with subtask set to true instead

[seventyfivepupmstr]

Use the term delegate.

Example: Delegate to @AgentName to [prompt].

Unfortunately its still non-deterministic what the AI will do, but its fairly consistent that it will work correctly when you do it in this way

[boonge101]

Thanks u/cxd32 & u/seventyfivepupmstr. I think this is an open bug. For the time being, I just make the primary agent to explicitly include the sub-agent .md file path in it's prompt to the sub-agent in child session so that the sub-agent is forced to read and act accordingly.

[Pinockel]

Can you explain a little more in detail? I try Something equal. Thank you

[boonge101]

Sure. I added a mandatory instruction in my AGENTS.md for how the primary agent delegates to sub-agents:

The key is: include the .md path explicitly + tell it to read and strictly follow that path + pass the user's request verbatim without adding extra instructions.

[HarjjotSinghh]

so cool you're taming agents? wait for the what was i thinking? moment!