The Week Opus 5.5 Became the Default, I Counted the Places I'd Left as Aliases
Claude Code 2.1.280 made Opus 5.5 the default Opus and moved Pro's default from Sonnet to Opus. Before touching a single setting, I checked three things: what the alias resolves to, whether a saved /effort carries over, and what $0.20 cache reads do to a monthly estimate. Scripts included.
Taking Inventory of Worktrees That Were Supposed to Be Gone
Isolated worktrees my subagents created were never folded away. Here is what I measured in git 2.34.1 about when remove succeeds, the branches that outlive the trees, the 12 MB per-tree difference, and how I decide who owns cleanup.
Now that forking is the default, review agents are the ones I still call by name
Subagent forking became the default, so delegated work now inherits the parent conversation. Work can inherit context. Judgment cannot. Here is how I declare that boundary in the repository and catch it drifting.
Tracking Multi-Step Work in Claude Code Now That the Todo Tools Are Off by Default
Since Claude Code v2.1.233, TodoWrite and the Task tools are left out on the newer models. Here are the three branches to check before you set the opt-in variable, the PostToolUse ledger I put in their place, and the measured point where that ledger quietly corrupts under parallel agents.
The Write Your Permission Mode Never Stops — Auditing an Agent-Scoped PreToolUse Gate Across 150 Payloads
Workflow subagents auto-approve file edits regardless of your session permission mode. I measured the remaining boundary — an agent_id-scoped PreToolUse hook — across 150 payloads, found 54 silent pass-throughs, and rebuilt it to fail closed.
Branch with /fork, Delegate with /subtask — Two Commands That Traded Jobs
In Claude Code 2.1.212, /fork now clones your conversation into a background session, and in-session subagents moved to /subtask. Here is how I decide between them, and the budgets worth setting before you start branching freely.
Running Claude Code Without Breakage — A Failure-First Production Workflow with Plan Mode, Hooks, Rewind, and Subagents
If Claude Code has ever landed a broken commit on your main branch, this guide shows how to combine Plan Mode, Hooks, Rewind, and Subagents into a single failure-first workflow that keeps your repository safe without slowing you down.
My Nightly Subagents Ran, and I Couldn't Retrace Them — Trimming the Logs That --forward-subagent-text Unleashed
Subagent text and thinking can now flow into stream-json output, and unattended log volume climbs sharply with it. Here are measured numbers, a three-tier retention filter that keeps only what postmortems need, and a correlation ID design that survives missing fields.
Don't Accept an Agent's Numbers and Citations As-Is — A Verification Gate Built on a Dedicated Auditor Subagent
A design that verifies every number and citation in an agent-generated summary using a separate subagent before accepting it — with working TypeScript for deterministic recomputation and fail-closed source matching.
Running Subagents in Parallel Without One Failure Sinking the Whole Run
A fan-out / fan-in design for running several subagents in parallel, covering token budgeting, a result contract, and partial-failure handling. Includes an implementation where one branch can fail without stopping the rest, plus measured numbers.
A SubagentStop Hook That Grades Subagent Output and Sends It Back to Be Redone
When a Claude Code subagent occasionally returns rule-breaking work, a SubagentStop hook can grade it automatically and ask for a redo. Here is a working setup with code and field notes.
Context Budgets for Nested Subagents: Designing Contracts So 5-Level Delegation Doesn't Lose Quality
Once subagents could nest, deeper delegation made summaries thinner and reruns more frequent. Here is how I rebuilt quality by adding four contracts between layers: token budgets, a handoff schema, failure isolation, and an independent grader.