You describe a job to Claude without naming any particular worker for it, and Claude hands it to one of your project's subagents anyway. What did it match the job against?

Easyclaude-codeworkflowssubagentsdelegation

Last reviewed 21 Aug 2026

Your phrasing, which is rewritten into the instructions that worker gets
Nothing — a worker has to be named, so Claude did the job itself
The subagent's own description of the kind of task it handlesCorrect answer
The worker's name, so a subagent's name has to say what it is for

Show answer & explanation

Correct answer: C. The subagent's own description of the kind of task it handles

Explanation

The principle — a subagent is chosen by what it says it is for, so the description is the field that matters.

Why the key is correct — Anthropic states it twice over. Claude automatically delegates tasks based on the task description in your request, and a task that matches a subagent's description goes to that subagent. Yours says what the job is; the worker's says what it takes on.

Why the others are wrong — no naming is needed for delegation to happen. A worker's name is not what gets compared, so a vague one costs nothing and a vivid one buys nothing. And an @-mention controls which subagent Claude invokes, not what prompt it receives.

Remember this — write the description for the matcher; that is the field it reads.

Sources — Anthropic's Claude Code subagents documentation.

Sources

Primary sourceCreate custom subagents — Anthropic · accessed 17 Aug 2026
“Claude automatically delegates tasks based on the task description in your request”
Primary sourceCreate custom subagents — Anthropic · accessed 17 Aug 2026
“When Claude encounters a task that matches a subagent's description, it delegates to that subagent, which works independently and returns results.”
Primary sourceCreate custom subagents — Anthropic · accessed 17 Aug 2026
“The @-mention controls which subagent Claude invokes, not what prompt it receives.”

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You describe a job to Claude without naming any particular worker for it, and Claude hands it to one of your project's subagents anyway. What did it match the job against?

Easyclaude-codeworkflowssubagentsdelegation

Last reviewed 21 Aug 2026

Your phrasing, which is rewritten into the instructions that worker gets
Nothing — a worker has to be named, so Claude did the job itself
The subagent's own description of the kind of task it handlesCorrect answer
The worker's name, so a subagent's name has to say what it is for

Show answer & explanation

Correct answer: C. The subagent's own description of the kind of task it handles

Explanation

The principle — a subagent is chosen by what it says it is for, so the description is the field that matters.

Remember this — write the description for the matcher; that is the field it reads.

Sources — Anthropic's Claude Code subagents documentation.

Sources

Primary sourceCreate custom subagents — Anthropic · accessed 17 Aug 2026
“Claude automatically delegates tasks based on the task description in your request”
Primary sourceCreate custom subagents — Anthropic · accessed 17 Aug 2026
“When Claude encounters a task that matches a subagent's description, it delegates to that subagent, which works independently and returns results.”
Primary sourceCreate custom subagents — Anthropic · accessed 17 Aug 2026
“The @-mention controls which subagent Claude invokes, not what prompt it receives.”

Practise 10 questions on this topic

Take Claude Code Workflows — Timed Test 1 (10 questions) — scored instantly, explanation for every question, no login.

Start the test

You describe a job to Claude without naming any particular worker for it, and Claude hands it to one of your project's subagents anyway. What did it match the job against?

Related questions

You describe a job to Claude without naming any particular worker for it, and Claude hands it to one of your project's subagents anyway. What did it match the job against?

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