[AffableSpatula]

Delegation patterns like swarm lead to less token usage because:

1. Subagents doing work have a fresh context (ie. focused and not working on the top of a larger monolithic context) 2. Subagents enjoying a more compact context leads to better reasoning, more effective problem solving, less tokens burned.

[nulone]

Merge cost kills this. Does the harness enforce file/ownership boundaries per worker, and run tests before folding changes back into the lead context?

[AffableSpatula]

I don't know what you're referring to but I can say with confidence that I see more efficient token usage from a delegated approach, for the reasons I stated, provided that the tasks are correctly sized. ymmv of course :)