Subagents: the Cursor model is worth studying

Cursor's subagents go further than the AGENTS.md pattern. Each gets its own context window and model config, runs foreground or background, and three built-ins (Explore, Bash, Browser) handle the noisiest operations automatically.

Custom subagents are markdown files with YAML frontmatter in .cursor/agents/ (or .claude/agents/):

---
name: security-auditor
description: Security specialist. Use when implementing auth, payments, or handling sensitive data.
model: inherit
readonly: true
---
 
You are a security expert auditing code for vulnerabilities.

The description field determines when the parent delegates — spend time on it. The model field lets you route high-volume tasks to a faster model and depth tasks to a more capable one.

Anti-pattern: dozens of vague subagents. Five focused ones with sharp descriptions outperform fifty the parent doesn't know when to use.