superpowers/skills/using-superpowers/references/claude-code-tools.md

Claude Code Tool Notes

Claude Code is the reference harness: skills speak its vocabulary (Agent for a subagent dispatch, todos, Skill). These notes cover the one place Claude Code can run a plan cheaper than the skills' default shape. It is opt-in by your human partner and changes nothing the skills require.

Cheaper orchestration for subagent-driven development

The controller session is the most expensive seat in a superpowers:subagent-driven-development run: it reads every dispatch result and every report, and it usually runs on the session's most capable model. Claude Code supports nested subagents (three layers below the main conversation by default; CLAUDE_CODE_MAX_SUBAGENT_SPAWN_DEPTH adjusts it), so the whole loop can run one layer down.

When your human partner asks for it — or has said the session model is too expensive to spend on coordination — dispatch ONE orchestrator subagent on a mid-tier model with the plan path and the instruction to use superpowers:subagent-driven-development end to end. The orchestrator dispatches its own implementers and reviewers per that skill's Model Selection; the workspace and ledger live on disk, so nothing is lost to the extra layer. Its final message must carry the "Rulings I made" list verbatim — that list is how the decisions reach your human partner, and you relay it, not summarize it.

Do this only for a whole plan. Nesting a single task's dispatch buys nothing and adds a seat.