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Claude Code v2.1.267 ·

Subagents can hand results back to their parent via a new SubagentHandback tool

A new SubagentHandback tool lets a subagent deliver its final report directly to the agent that spawned it, with delivery tracked end to end

TierUse it nowhow much it should matter to you
Useful5my rating, 1 to 5
Signal4worth watching, 1 to 5
AreaSubagentswhat it touches
KindNew Featuresin v2.1.267,
Group of 6 Use it now Notable

A new SubagentHandback tool lets a subagent deliver its final report directly to the agent that spawned it, with delivery tracked end to end

What

  • A new tool, SubagentHandback, lets a subagent send its final report straight to the agent (or main thread) that spawned it, as its one and only last tool call. It isn't a progress-update channel — it can only be called once, requires a non-empty message, and only works when the agent has an active "handback contract" with a recorded recipient.
  • Long reports are compacted or summarized before delivery, and get safety-review framing (blocked/refused/unavailable) attached.
  • The subagent's completion result now carries a handback payload (and a handbackInterim variant), and the finalize step computes whether the handback was sent, flagged, or withheld, appending a message to the result accordingly.
  • Async subagents can now explicitly hand control back to a specific owning agent (tracked as handbackRecipient) rather than only running to completion or being polled.
  • For subagents running in "auto" mode, this mechanism is what actually counts as the final answer: plain trailing text is discarded unless delivered through SubagentHandback. The feature is off by default, controlled by the CLAUDE_CODE_SENDMESSAGE_HANDBACK environment variable or an internal rollout gate.
  • Depending on the handback outcome (send, flagged, or withheld), the step that classifies a sub-agent's final output is skipped or has its text discarded, so results aren't double-processed.

Why This gives subagents a reliable, explicit way to report back to whatever spawned them, instead of relying on trailing text that might get lost, mis-parsed, or double-classified — useful for orchestration flows where a parent agent needs a clean, single final report from a subagent it dispatched.

Read from
Names in the bundleSubagentHandback
What the documentation says
Documented inclaude-code/hooks
Since it was published

The entry above is what we published on the day. These lines were added later, as Anthropic's own pages caught up, and they sit beside the original rather than replacing it.

Confirmed since Anthropic's documentation has since written up SubagentHandback, on Hooks reference. | `content` | array | `[{"type": "text", "text": "Found 12 endpoints..."}]` | The subagent's final text blocks, or, for a subagent whose report goes through `SubagentHandback`, a short note about that hand-back in their place | hooks see the edit
How sure we are
One source agreesOne thing we can check says the same as this entry.
Anthropic's documentation agreesAnthropic's documentation has since written up SubagentHandback, on Hooks reference.

See this entry in the whole of v2.1.267 →