The Cheap-Subagent Architecture: Why AI Agent Orchestration Wins in 2026
Haiku 5.5 costs one-fortieth of Opus per input token, Claude Code now gives each subagent its own effort level and token budget, and Codex runs read-only tools in parallel. But naive multi-agent teams cost 1.8 to 7 times more per task. Here is the architecture that captures the savings without buying the chaos.
Devdatta Narawade11 min