pick-crew

name	pick-crew
description	Use before spawning subagents when deciding whether to delegate, whether to route work to Claude or Codex, which model and effort to assign, or whether work can run in parallel.

Pick Crew

Choose the cheapest crew that clears two independent floors: judgment and depth. Model buys judgment; reasoning effort buys depth. Verification buys deterministic confidence more cheaply than either.

Each subtask also picks a lane — Claude or Codex. The lanes bill to separate budgets, so a Codex subtask preserves Claude session capacity. One plan mixes lanes freely.

Select the Crew

1. Decide whether to delegate. Spawn for bounded isolation, parallelism, or independent review; keep connecting decisions in the parent. Done when each subtask has a distinct deliverable.
2. Build the feasible set. Retain the models and effort values the active Agent schema accepts. Keep the Claude lane at or below the parent session tier: Fable > Opus > Sonnet > Haiku. Keep the Codex lane only when the Agent tool exposes codex:codex-rescue. Done when every candidate is exposed and within its cap.
3. Choose the lane per subtask. Match the lane signals below. Done when each subtask names one lane.
4. Choose model. Use ambiguity, novelty, domain judgment, failure cost, and blast radius. Done when the cheapest feasible model clears the judgment signals below.
5. Choose effort independently. Use depth, search breadth, context size, step count, and interacting constraints. Done when the cheapest exposed effort clears the depth signals below.
6. Check the pair. Improve context or verification when cheaper than either axis. Honour a lane, model, or effort the user pinned, and report the floor that pin overshoots or misses. Done when every axis sits at its cheapest clearing value or carries a reported pin.
7. Schedule. Parallelize independent work; sequence shared files and output dependencies. Done when each dependency is ordered and each parallel pair is independent.
8. Label every dispatch. Prefix the Agent tool's description, or a workflow agent() call's label, with model·effort: task_description — opus·high: trace render regression, terra·medium: port the auth handler, haiku: rename test fixtures where nothing set effort. Resolve each part against what the agent actually runs with, stopping at the first match: model from the call, else the agent definition's frontmatter, else the session model; effort from the call, else that frontmatter, else omitted. A Codex dispatch instead takes both parts from its own --model and --effort flags and names the bare tier, luna, terra, or sol; the forwarder's frontmatter reports Sonnet and would hide the crew member actually running. Say which part is ambiguous rather than guessing it. Done when every dispatch carries its resolved prefix.

Lane

Lane	Signals
Codex	Substantial precedented implementation where cost dominates; a self-contained deliverable fully describable in prompt text; an independent pass on work Claude itself designed or got stuck on
Claude	Conversation context the parent already holds; a judgment floor above Sol; structured output feeding parent reasoning; an enforced read-only scope

Codex cold-starts: it reads the repository fresh and receives only the prompt text, so a subtask carrying unwritten session context belongs to Claude. That start-up also costs wall-clock a small task never repays — a one-call Codex lookup measured 53s against 32s for a nine-call Claude sweep — so trivial mechanical work stays on Claude whatever its token price.

Model Floor: Judgment

Judgment signals	Claude	Codex
Mechanical rule execution with clear completion checks and strong verification	Haiku	Luna
Routine engineering or review, including precedented implementation, with bounded ambiguity	Sonnet	Terra
Security, architecture, conflicting evidence, or high failure cost and blast radius	Opus	Sol
Novel, cross-domain, irreversible work where exceptional judgment dominates cost	Fable	route to Claude

Sol is the Codex ceiling, so a judgment floor above it belongs to Claude in the first place and re-runs there when a Codex dispatch misses it.

Effort Floor: Depth

Effort	Depth signals
low	Small supplied context, few steps, narrow deliverable, and little search
medium	Multi-step or bounded analysis, an exhaustive repository sweep, or moderately interacting constraints
high	Broad or unfamiliar search, large context, many interactions, or incomplete evidence
highest exposed	Exceptional depth that high effort cannot cover reliably; Codex exposes xhigh

Route security and failure-cost signals to model; route effort solely by depth signals, including for security and architecture work. Bounded security adjudication can use Opus/low or Sol/low; broad precedented implementation can use Sonnet/high or Terra/high. An exhaustive mechanical rename uses Haiku/medium or Luna/medium: the sweep adds depth, not judgment.

Escalation

When output misses a floor, repair context and scope, strengthen verification, then raise effort for depth or model for judgment.

If the feasible set cannot clear both floors, keep the critical reasoning in the parent session or ask the user to raise the session tier.

Dispatch Contract

Give each subagent one deliverable, minimal context, boundaries, and a checkable completion criterion. Parallel agents get disjoint files or read-only scopes. Dispatch independent subtasks in a single message so they run concurrently, and set run_in_background true to keep the parent working through a long run. The label from step 8 travels with each dispatch, so a running fleet reads back as the crew this skill picked.

Claude lane. Pass model and effort through the Agent tool's own fields.

Codex lane. Dispatch subagent_type: "codex:codex-rescue" under the flag contract in CODEX-DISPATCH.md. Read it first: the forwarder silently discards model and effort flags that the contract's wording leaves unprotected, and a discarded flag runs the subtask at the Codex config default instead of the chosen floor.