Subagent Orchestration

Subagent Orchestration

Delegate a task to a different model than the one currently driving the session, then return the result to the caller.

When to use this skill

Activate when the user expresses any of:

• "Send this to Codex / Gemini / Claude as a second opinion"
• "Run this query across all three and compare"
• "Use a cheaper model for this part"
• "I'm rate-limited on Claude — use Gemini for now"
• "Spawn a subagent for this side task"
• Any reference to multi-model, second opinion, subagent, or cost optimization across models

Do not activate when:

• The user has only one agent CLI installed.
• The task requires interactive multi-turn (subagent runs are non-interactive).

Model strengths reference

Routing rules

The skill picks a model based on task signals:

+-----------------------------+----------+
| Signal                      |  Model   |
+-----------------------------+----------+
| "research", "what's new"    | Codex    |
| "summarize this 500-page"   | Gemini   |
| "review this PR carefully"  | Claude   |
| "describe this image"       | Gemini   |
| "second opinion on plan X"  | round-robin (caller's preferred order) |
+-----------------------------+----------+

Override: user can say "force gemini" / "use codex" — explicit always wins.

Procedure

Single-model delegation

./scripts/orch.sh --model gemini --prompt "Summarize the attached file in 5 bullets" --file ./report.pdf
./scripts/orch.sh --model codex --prompt "What's the latest on the OpenAI API rate-limit changes?"

Cross-check (run on all three)

./scripts/orch.sh --crosscheck --prompt "Is this SQL injection-safe? <code>"

Returns a 3-column table: each model's answer side-by-side.

Cost-aware routing

./scripts/orch.sh --auto --prompt "Reformat this CSV" --budget low

--budget low prefers Gemini, --budget high prefers Claude Opus. Default is --budget medium.

Edge cases

• CLI not installed: detect at startup, list available models, pick from those. If none available, return an explicit error with install hints.
• Rate-limited: if a model returns a 429-equivalent, try the next preferred model. Cache the rate-limit state for 5 minutes to avoid retrying.
• Token cap exceeded: if a long prompt would blow the context window of one model, automatically route to the largest-context model (Gemini for >200K tokens).
• Same prompt, different formats: each CLI has its own arg syntax. The skill normalizes these into one interface.
• Cost-tracking: write a one-line audit log to ~/.cache/subagent-orch/log.jsonl per call (timestamp, model, approximate token count if available).

Output format

Single-model: print the model's response verbatim, prefixed with [<model>]: on the first line.

Crosscheck: a Markdown table with columns claude | codex | gemini, each cell showing the response (truncated to 80 chars if very long, with a note about the truncation).

Differentiation

• Claude Code's Agent tool can spawn sub-Claudes but not other vendors. This skill bridges across vendors.
• OpenRouter / LiteLLM route at the API layer; this skill routes at the CLI layer, using each vendor's official CLI which handles auth, billing, and rate limits transparently.
• Manual model-switching by the user is annoying; this skill automates it based on task type.

Limitations

• Auth is per-CLI (each model needs its own login on the host).
• No streaming aggregation — calls are blocking.
• The "auto" routing rule is heuristic, not learned; user is encouraged to override when wrong.
• Token counting is approximate (each CLI exposes different metrics).