subagent

[ SUHB-ey-juhnt ]noun

A second AI sent off to do one small job on its own, which comes back with only the answer.

Explanation

The main defence against context explosion. The main one keeps the plan; the little one keeps the mess.

Related words

• context explosion — What happens when you hand an AI so much material at once that the answers get worse.
• agentic coding — Working with an AI that goes off and does a whole job in a loop — looks things up, uses tools, checks its own work — instead of answering one question at a time.