Seeing lots of screenshots of dynamic workflows burning through tokens. It’s not a bug, it’s the default behavior. By default, every subagent uses the same model as your main session. The docs say it plainly: “every agent in a workflow uses your session’s model unless the script routes a stage to a different one.” So on Opus 4.8, 50 agents means running Opus 50 times at once. That’s why the bill is huge. The fix: send the cheap work to a cheaper model.
- Opus for planning, strategy, and orchestration
- Sonnet for the actual work Just say it when you start. A prompt you can copy: Build a dynamic workflow for [task]. Use plan mode first and show me the plan before running. Keep it token efficient. Use Opus only for planning, strategy, and orchestration. Route all implementation to Sonnet. If you are using my prompt improver hook this becomes automatic. https://github.com/severity1/claude-code-prompt-improver submitted by /u/crystalpeaks25
Originally posted by u/crystalpeaks25 on r/ClaudeCode
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