Delegation - CowAgent

Delegation lets one Agent ask another for help. Unlike a sub agent, the target is not created for the occasion: it is a standing peer with its own workspace, memory, skills, sessions and scheduler. It answers from its own environment, and the answer comes back to the Agent that asked, never to the user.

The agent_delegate tool only appears in a team conversation — two or more enabled Agents with teammates in the room. A single-Agent install never sees it.

Sub Agent or Peer

	Sub agent	Delegation
Lifetime	Created for one task, then gone	Standing Agent, configured up front
Workspace	Shares the caller’s	Its own
Memory	None of its own	Its own
Identity	Anonymous	Appears in the Agent list, can own channels
Result	Returned inline	Returned inline

Use a sub agent to parallelise your own work. Delegate when the task belongs to somebody else — the Agent that owns the codebase, the knowledge base or the customer relationship.

Delegation Is Synchronous

Delegating hands a task over and waits for the teammate’s answer, then returns it. The call blocks until the teammate is done (or the time budget runs out), so there is nothing to poll and no handle to track:

agent_delegate(agent_id="research", task="...")
  -> { status: "done", content: "..." }

Under the hood the run is still recorded in the target’s workspace, with the asking run as its parent, so a chain of delegations stays walkable from either end.

The Teammates You Can Reach

The Agents you may delegate to are the teammates in the current conversation — exactly the roster the team conversation section of your context lists, IDs and all. Delegation stays inside the team the user set up; it can never hand work to an Agent outside the room, even one the allowlist would otherwise permit. Aim at someone who is not a teammate and the tool refuses, naming the teammates you can actually reach.

Parameters

agent_id — the teammate’s ID (the @id shown for them in the team conversation section). task — a self-contained brief the teammate can act on without seeing this conversation.

Guards

Delegation is between full Agents, so it is fenced in:

Membership — the target must be a teammate in this conversation
Allowlist — who may ask whom. Unset means any Agent may delegate to any other
Cycles — an Agent already in the chain cannot be delegated to again
Depth — how many hops one chain may take
Size — the largest task text accepted
Time budget — the longest a delegated run may take before it is given up on

Configuration

{
  "agent_delegation": {
    "enabled": true,
    "allowed_targets": {
      "assistant": ["research", "support"],
      "research": []
    },
    "max_depth": 3,
    "timeout_seconds": 600,
    "max_message_chars": 8000
  }
}

Field	Default	Meaning
`enabled`	`true`	Set to `false`, or the whole block to `false`, to withhold the tool
`allowed_targets`	unset	Maps a source Agent ID to the IDs it may reach; `"*"` allows any. Unset allows every pair. Targets are further bounded to the current conversation’s teammates
`max_depth`	`3`	Delegation hops in one chain (1-8)
`timeout_seconds`	`600`	Budget for one delegated run (0.01-600)
`max_message_chars`	`8000`	Size limit for one delegated task

An Agent listed with an empty array, like "research" above, can be delegated to but cannot delegate onward.

​Sub Agent or Peer

​Delegation Is Synchronous

​The Teammates You Can Reach

​Parameters

​Guards

​Configuration

Sub Agent or Peer

Delegation Is Synchronous

The Teammates You Can Reach

Parameters

Guards

Configuration