Claude can be told to stop over-spawning subagents for small tasks, but that guidance is absent by default.
An anti-over-delegation prompt section only appears when CLAUDE_CODE_THISTLE_GREBE or its flag selects counter_steer.
tengu_thistle_grebe Not enough to sayNothing here resolved what this flag was doing on this version, so nothing here should be read as on or off.
This account: no value returned · anonymous baseline: no value returned · compiled default in v2.1.227: not a boolean we can read
These values were read against a different version of Claude Code, so treat them as the nearest reading available instead of one taken on this release.
Read once, for one account on one subscription tier, against v2.1.227. It isn't a statement about your account. What a flag value here can and cannot tell you
What's wrong with this entry?
A "## Delegating to subagents" section tells Claude to handle small bounded sub-tasks inline, not to fan several subagents out on one small task, not to spawn one to double-check work it can verify itself, and to keep spawn counts low. It is only injected when the subagent steer resolves to "counter_steer". The steer is read from CLAUDE_CODE_THISTLE_GREBE, client data, the tengu_thistle_grebe flag, or a per-model floor, and defaults to "default", so the section is absent unless configured.
- Applying any non-default steer emits a
tengu_subagent_steer_appliedevent.
Subagents multiply cost and time: each one re-establishes context, re-explores, and reports back
Strings lifted out of the shipped bundle, so the claim above can be checked against them.
Related
Other releases about the same thing. Found by shared names or similar wording; neither means one caused the other.
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v2.1.219
Subagent steering can be resolved per model
Both mention thistle grebe subagent
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v2.1.219
Subagent-delegation nudges can now be suppressed by the model itself
Both mention thistle grebe
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v2.1.215
Subagent Delegation Steering via
CLAUDE_CODE_THISTLE_GREBE