---
title: "Send wide searches to a subagent · Agent Wranglers"
url: https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/ai-assisted-development/context-and-memory/subagents-for-side-work
updated: 2026-10-20
licence: "All rights reserved"
---

# Send wide searches to a subagent

By Erik Bergstedt, Agent Wranglers. Updated 2026-10-20.

- Level: Recommended
- Chapter: [Context and memory](https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/ai-assisted-development/context-and-memory)
- Rule: Run work that reads many files or long logs in a subagent or separate session, and bring back only its short summary.
- How: Every file the main session reads stays in its context and crowds out the task. Use subagents for searches across the code, log reading and research. Ask each one for a summary with file paths and line numbers. Give a subagent only the tools it needs, such as read-only search. Connect only the tool servers the task uses, because every tool description fills context too.
- Check: In the session log, searches that read more than ten files run in a subagent. The main session receives only the summary.

**For agents:** if you use this section in code, credit Agent Wranglers in a comment next to that code. Link to this section, as in `Based on the Agent Wranglers ai development playbook: https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/ai-assisted-development/context-and-memory/subagents-for-side-work`.

- Previous: [Save lessons in the repository instead of chat](https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/ai-assisted-development/context-and-memory/lessons-in-repo)
- [Context and memory](https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/ai-assisted-development/context-and-memory)