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You’ll learn: when Agent Teams justify their ~15x cost, how delegate mode works, and the practical failure modes to watch for.
Official reference — The official Agent Teams docs cover setup, architecture, keyboard shortcuts, display modes, and limitations. This page adds the decision framework and practical advice.
Agent Teams is experimental. Expect rough edges — no session resumption, occasional task status lag, and slow shutdown.

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When to Use Agent Teams

Use this decision framework: Agent Teams justifies its ~15x token cost only when agents genuinely need to share findings, challenge each other’s assumptions, or self-coordinate through a shared task list.

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Delegate Mode Is Essential

Press Shift+Tab to cycle into delegate mode, which restricts the lead to coordination-only tools.
Without delegate mode, the lead frequently implements tasks itself instead of delegating. Practitioners consistently flag this as the most common Agent Teams failure mode.
In delegate mode, the lead can only:
  • Create and manage tasks
  • Send messages to teammates
  • Review and approve plans
  • Synthesize results

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A Typical Session

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Practical Advice

  • Sweet spot: 3-5 teammates. Fewer underutilizes parallelism; more creates coordination overhead exceeding the throughput gain.
  • Use plan approval for high-stakes work — teammates submit plans before implementing, the lead reviews.
  • Prepare for no session resumption. If you need to /resume, tell the lead to spawn replacement teammates.
  • Nudge on task status lag. Teammates sometimes forget to mark tasks complete — check with Ctrl+T.