PRODUCTION SCENARIO
Your repository assistant runs on Claude Opus 4.6. Traces show it spawning three subagents to find where a config key is read, when one grep would answer the question, and doing much the same on most single-file edits, which doubles latency. The same assistant also runs wide parallel sweeps across forty packages during refactors, and those sweeps are the reason the subagent tool is there at all.
What is the most effective first adjustment?
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Answer: Add system prompt guidance that reserves subagents for parallel or isolated tasks
This model delegates readily and will spawn subagents where a direct grep is faster, and the documented remedy is guidance naming the cases that justify delegation: parallel work, isolated context, independent workstreams, and direct work everywhere else. Low effort is the right lever when the delegations are warranted and only their cost is too high, but the spawns here should not have happened at all, so they would just get cheaper. Removing the tool is right when nothing in the workload benefits from delegation, and it gives up the forty-package sweeps. A one-per-turn cap is the throttle for concurrency-driven cost, and it blocks those same sweeps while conveying nothing about which tasks are worth delegating.