Assistant Subagents

Subagents let Orbit hand big jobs to a team of smaller helpers. When you ask for a change that touches many files at once, Orbit works out the plan, then spawns subagents that make the edits in parallel. Big batch jobs finish faster, cost less, and leave your conversation much cleaner afterward.

When Orbit uses them

Subagents shine on wide, repetitive work. Requests like these:

“Add a materials field to every gear item and fill it in.”
“Give all of my military units a little more detail.”
“Check every character and make sure they have a description.”

Without subagents, Orbit reads every file and edits them one at a time. All of those files then sit in the conversation for the rest of the chat, which makes every message after the job slower and more expensive.

See Context Rot for why that matters.

How it works

Orbit does the thinking, and the subagents do the busywork:

Orbit makes a plan. It samples a few of your files, checks the file type, and decides exactly what the change should look like.
The job gets split into batches. Each subagent receives the plan plus its own list of files to handle.
Subagents work in parallel. Each one reads only its own files, makes the edits, and reports back with what it changed.
Orbit wraps up. It spot-checks a couple of results and gives you a summary.

While the job runs, a panel appears under Orbit’s message with one row per subagent. You can watch each one work in real time, and expand a row to see everything it did and its final report.

Faster, cheaper, cleaner

Here’s a real example. We asked Orbit to add a new field to 97 gear files and fill in a value for each one.

Without subagents: 13.3 credits and about 3 minutes. Every gear file ended up in the conversation, so every message after the job cost more too.
With subagents: 4.3 credits and about 90 seconds. That’s roughly 68% cheaper and twice as fast. The conversation stayed small, so follow-up messages cost a fraction of what they would have.

What subagents can do

Subagents keep a small set of simple tools. They can read, search, create, and update the files in your project. That’s it. They can’t delete files, change your settings, or generate images. They also can’t see your conversation with Orbit. Each one only knows the instructions Orbit gave it.

Subagent work is billed like normal assistant usage. Open the cost breakdown on a message and you’ll see a Subagents line showing what the helpers spent.

Changing the model or turning subagents off

Subagents are on by default. In Orbit’s settings panel you can turn them off, or pick which model they run on. Smaller, faster models like Hy3 or DeepSeek V4 Flash [Discounted] are a great fit. Subagent tasks are focused enough that they don’t need a big model.

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Assistant Subagents

When Orbit uses them

Subagents shine on wide, repetitive work. Requests like these:

“Add a materials field to every gear item and fill it in.”

“Give all of my military units a little more detail.”

“Check every character and make sure they have a description.”

See Context Rot for why that matters.

How it works

Orbit does the thinking, and the subagents do the busywork:

Orbit makes a plan. It samples a few of your files, checks the file type, and decides exactly what the change should look like.

The job gets split into batches. Each subagent receives the plan plus its own list of files to handle.

Subagents work in parallel. Each one reads only its own files, makes the edits, and reports back with what it changed.

Orbit wraps up. It spot-checks a couple of results and gives you a summary.

While the job runs, a panel appears under Orbit’s message with one row per subagent. You can watch each one work in real time, and expand a row to see everything it did and its final report.

Faster, cheaper, cleaner

Here’s a real example. We asked Orbit to add a new field to 97 gear files and fill in a value for each one.

Without subagents: 13.3 credits and about 3 minutes. Every gear file ended up in the conversation, so every message after the job cost more too.

With subagents: 4.3 credits and about 90 seconds. That’s roughly 68% cheaper and twice as fast. The conversation stayed small, so follow-up messages cost a fraction of what they would have.

What subagents can do

Subagent work is billed like normal assistant usage. Open the cost breakdown on a message and you’ll see a Subagents line showing what the helpers spent.