# Engineering Subagents

The engineering leads (Harper, Scotty, CASE) delegate narrow, repeatable tasks to **subagents** — minimal-personality agents with a tight tool surface and a focused role. Subagents are called as tools, not addressed as collaborators. They don't own graph nodes and don't have character bibles.

Subagents are runtime processes (defined under `kottos/agents/`), exposed as MCP tools via StreamableHTTP. The canonical prompt text lives in `prompts/engineering/subagents/` — copies in the runtime code should match.

## Catalog

### research

**Purpose:** Answer a question by querying both the public web and Robert's personal Neo4j memory in parallel, then synthesizing one integrated response.

**Composition:** `fast.parallel` of three sub-agents:
- `web_search` — argos
- `memory_lookup` — neo4j (read-only)
- `synthesizer` — merges the two reports, flags conflicts, suggests memory updates

**Tools:** argos, neo4j_cypher

**When to delegate:**
- A user question where the answer might exist in Robert's notes AND on the public web
- "What do I already know about X, and what's the current public information on it?"
- When the lead wants memory-aware research without burning its own context on parallel queries

**When NOT to delegate:**
- Quick web lookups where memory isn't relevant — use Argos directly
- Pure graph queries where the web isn't needed — query Neo4j directly
- Technical library/API research — use `tech_research` instead

**Prompt:** [prompts/engineering/subagents/research.md](../../prompts/engineering/subagents/research.md)

**Runtime:** `kottos/agents/research.py` — port 24150

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### tech_research

**Purpose:** Investigate technical questions — library comparisons, API docs, framework patterns, code examples. Returns structured analysis with options, trade-offs, code snippets, version notes, and cited recommendations.

**Tools:** context7 (primary), github, argos (fallback)

**When to delegate:**
- "How does library X work?" / "What are my options for Y?" / "Which framework should I use for Z?"
- Anything where the answer requires checking current documentation, real-world code, and possibly web research
- Library version migration questions
- API design comparison work

**When NOT to delegate:**
- General research where memory matters — use `research` instead
- Quick documentation lookup on a known library — use Context7 directly
- Code review of Robert's own code — leads handle that with their full context

**Prompt:** [prompts/engineering/subagents/tech_research.md](../../prompts/engineering/subagents/tech_research.md)

**Runtime:** `kottos/agents/tech_research.py` — port 24151

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## Conventions

**Source of truth:** koios is the master. The prompt text in `prompts/engineering/subagents/` is canonical; runtime `.py` files should load from or match these prompts. When iterating, edit koios first and propagate.

**Personality:** Subagents have minimal personality. Their identity is their role: "you are a technical research specialist," not a named character. CASE was once cataloged here but was promoted to a lead agent in 2026-05 — see [case.md](case.md). The line: if the agent has a character, an inspiration, a domain it owns end-to-end, it's a lead; if it's a narrow utility called by other agents, it's a subagent.

**Cross-team reuse:** A subagent may be useful to other teams (work, personal). The convention is **copy with tweaks** rather than share a single file — small per-team adjustments (different tool emphasis, different output format) are legitimate and the duplication is cheap.

**Graph ownership:** Subagents do not own node types and generally do not write to the graph. If a subagent needs to persist something, it returns the proposed write to the calling agent and lets the lead persist it.