Proposal: The apply proposal should instruct the agent to delegate tasks to subagents

[clay-good]

Note

Moved from issue #572, originally opened by @antonio-ivanovski on 2026-01-24. Continuing the conversation here in Discussions — the original issue thread (including any comments) stays available at #572 for the record.

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While working on any proposal size my workflow is to have the best model at disposal as the main model (great results with Opus 4.5) and some cheaper as the worker model (all will work, Sonnet 4.5 is excellent). I have stable results with simple addition to the apply command

And the best part, the complete flow took 30% of the context, leaving much room for further debugging and changes.

To achieve this, i have one simple change the apply command:

**Steps**
Track these steps as TODOs and complete them one by one.
1. Read `changes/<id>/proposal.md`, `design.md` (if present), and `tasks.md` to confirm scope and acceptance criteria.
-2. Work through tasks sequentially, keeping edits minimal and focused on the requested change.
+2. Work through tasks sequentially (individually or in small batches) ONLY by delegating to @general subagent (never by yourself), keeping edits minimal and focused on the requested change.
3. Confirm completion before updating statuses—make sure every item in `tasks.md` is finished.
4. Update the checklist after all work is done so each task is marked `- [x]` and reflects reality.
5. Reference `openspec list` or `openspec show <item>` when additional context is required.

This proposal is also in line with the latest workflow claude-code is making with tasks and delegating to subagents.

Maybe this can be added to the source too?

[carlsonwf]

Any news on this proposal?
I think that supporting subagents is a great feature even if openspec wants to be multi-platform

[lemonaide152]

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