docs(CLAUDE.md): discourage unprompted subagents and dynamic workflows#24027
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ludamad
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Jun 11, 2026
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v5-next counterpart of #24026.
Adds an
<agent_and_workflow_restraint>block to the rootCLAUDE.mdtelling Claude to do work inline in the current session and not spawn parallel subagents or launch dynamic workflows unless the user explicitly asks.Why
Operators have reported burning through their token budget from a single prompt that quietly fanned out — in one case a "summarize recent ZK advancements" query started ~30 agents, and another exhausted a 5h budget spinning up subagents. Parallel agents and dynamic workflows multiply spend (≈2x for one helper, far more for a swarm) and the user can neither see the fan-out coming nor stop it. This appears to be a current tendency of Fable. The guidance reasserts: handle search/summarize/research/multi-file edits inline, reserve subagents for explicit user requests or a single read-heavy isolation case, and never start a dynamic workflow by default.
Passes the repo's
<editorial_test>: the line would have prevented the ~30-agent fan-out on an ordinary research prompt described above.An equivalent shared rule is being added in the claudebox repo so it applies to every managed session.
Created by claudebox · group:
slackbot