| name | delegate-to-worker-models |
| description | Delegate implementation to cheap or small models safely by pre-deciding everything. Use when splitting work across agent lanes, picking a model tier, or writing a worker prompt: "can a small model do this", "delegate this", "fan this out", "spawn workers for these", "which model for this task". Encodes the lane contract template, the pre-verified guide requirement, and the honest track record of where cheap models succeed and where they quietly fail. |
Delegate to Worker Models
Cheap models are not junior engineers; they are excellent typists. Observed across
production agent runs, small models are reliable in exactly two roles: total-spec
execution (every decision already made, written down, and verified) and mechanical,
evidence-only verification (run these commands, report the raw output). Everywhere they
were handed a decision, they drifted: inventing spec where the prompt was silent, or dying
on a trap the coordinator knew about but did not restate. The wins are a decomposition
achievement, not a model achievement: the coordinator pre-deciding everything is what makes
cheap models safe.
The two safe jobs, and the tell
- Total-spec execution: the lane implements a written guide with zero open questions.
- Evidence-only verification: the lane runs named checks and returns raw output, never
a judgment.
The tell: if the prompt needs the phrase "use your judgment" anywhere, it is a strong-model
task. Do not lengthen the prompt to compensate; change the model or make the decision
yourself first.
The pre-verified guide (a lane is only as safe as its guide)
Before delegating anything non-mechanical, write a guide the lane executes. Every API
signature in it is grepped from the installed package source (the type declarations on
disk) the day the guide is written, never recalled from memory: recall is the hallucination
risk, in the guide author as much as in the lane. Name the repo conventions with a concrete
file to copy from. A lane without a guide is a coin flip; a lane with one lands green.