Skills vs Subagents

Skills teach this agent how to do a job. Subagents are other agents you hand work to.

	Skill	Subagent
What it is	A playbook, template, or script	A separate agent with its own tools and context
Runs where	Inside the current chat	In its own conversation
Best for	Repeatable process, shared knowledge	Parallel work, specialists

Quick decision

You want to…	Use
Follow a step-by-step process	Skill
Store templates or domain knowledge	Skill
Reuse the same process on many agents	Skill
Research three things at once	Subagent (clone)
Hand work to a specialist (Sales, Support)	Subagent (other agent)
Coordinate several specialists	Subagent

Details: Agent Skills and Subagents.

If you are about to paste a long SOP into the agent instructions, make a skill. If you are about to give one agent every connector in the company, split specialists and call them as subagents.

FAQ

When should I write a skill?

For a repeatable process. Example: “draft the weekly pipeline recap in this format.”

When should I use a clone?

For parallel research. Example: “research these three competitors at once.”

When should I invoke another named agent?

For cross-domain work. Example: a coordinator asks the CRM agent and the writing agent, then combines the answers.

Can I use both?

Yes. Put a skill on the coordinator that says when to call which subagent.

Agent Skills

How skills attach and load

Skills vs app rules

Playbooks vs guardrails

⌘I

​Quick decision

​FAQ

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Agent Skills

Skills vs app rules

Quick decision

FAQ

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