HUGE!
In an 11–6 ruling, the Fifth Circuit held that illegal aliens arrested by ICE can be detained WITHOUT BOND throughout their removal proceedings.
ARREST. DETAIN. DEPORT. REPEAT.
Banger guide by Anthropic.
While frontier models have improved at context management, subagents still help in some cases (e.g., parallelizing research tasks with their own context windows).
I still use them, but mostly for complex research work via dynamic workflows and /goal.
For most agent workflows, folding subagents into the main loop via tool calls and skills makes a ton of sense (as Anthropic recommends). That's because newer models are more persistent and better at managing large contexts. Subagents might be getting in the way now, since models can handle much of what subagents were used for. I see a similar pattern with memory (another day).
But you can't just get rid of subagents if you have been using them extensively. You need to run evals (cost, efficiency, etc.) and let that help you determine whether to fold them (and how) into the main agent loop.
The evals should always inform your strategy.
But keep in mind issues that can arise when scaling agent work, such as too many tool calls, context bloat, and unclear separation of concerns. Subagents are still very useful for that.
Lastly, all of this is constantly evolving as frontier models improve. Always keep an open mind and regularly test/eval your workflows and harnesses.