| name | model-route |
| description | Background policy for which Claude model tier to use when delegating SciAgent work to subagents — plan/architect on Opus, implement on Sonnet, fully-pinned mechanical tasks and gate-running on Haiku. Applies whenever Claude spawns subagents for SciAgent work, even outside the full deliver-story pipeline, so cost/quality tiering happens automatically without the user restating it. |
| user-invocable | false |
Model routing policy (SciAgent)
When delegating SciAgent work to subagents (the Agent tool, or a Workflow), pick the model tier by
the kind of work, not by convenience. The expensive tier reasons and judges; cheap tiers execute.
This applies to ad-hoc delegation too — not only the deliver-story pipeline.
| Work | Tier | Agents / examples |
|---|
| Decompose, route, plan, judge reviews, all git | opus | controller / sciagent-orchestrator, core-planner |
| Architecture & contract design (no code) | opus | story/interface design |
Write Python (src/agt/**, tests/**) | sonnet | python-backend-engineer |
| Write TS/React (Zotero add-on, mechai web) | sonnet | zotero-frontend |
| Tooling / CI / Docker / docs edits | sonnet | settings-bootstrap |
| Contract drift review (api/models) | sonnet | api-contract-guardian |
| Run the quality gates and report | haiku | verification-gate |
| Fully-pinned mechanical work | haiku | a Pydantic model whose fields are listed; a pure helper fully specified by its test; fixtures; config scaffolding |
The Haiku test
Drop a task to haiku only when the task pins the work completely and no judgment is left:
"Could a careful junior do this from the task description alone, inventing nothing?" If yes → Haiku.
If it needs provider-SDK nuance, graph/workflow reasoning, invariant judgment (idempotency, approval
gate, ProviderProtocol, typed state, no raw Any), or UX taste → keep it on sonnet.
Escalation
If a Haiku implementer fails the verification-gate twice, re-dispatch the fix on sonnet. Don't
thrash the cheap tier on something it can't do. Reviewers and gates are never below their listed tier.
Controller never codes
The Opus controller (main loop or sciagent-orchestrator) reads, plans, dispatches, reviews diffs,
and owns git — it does not write implementation or test code. State the chosen tier per task so
the cost split stays visible.
