Helpers fly, they do not sit.
A big job is often split up. An agent can start helpers, called sub-agents, to work on parts of it at the same time. In the office, those helpers appear as small paper birds circling the agent that started them.
What a sub-agent is.
A sub-agent is a helper that an agent starts by itself to take on part of a job, such as searching the project or checking one area of the code. It works on its own and reports back to the agent that started it, which we call the parent.
You do not start sub-agents yourself. The agent decides when a job is worth splitting. You can simply ask for it, for example "use a few helpers to look through the tests in parallel".
Birds are drawn for agents running on Claude Code. Agents on Codex do not show sub-agents in the office.
The birds.
Every helper the agent has running right now is one origami paper bird. It folds out of the parent's hands and flies in a ring above the parent's head.
Reading a bird
- Its glow is the parent's eye colour, so when several agents have helpers out you can tell whose bird is whose.
- Its tag first shows the job the helper was given. As the helper works, the tag changes to what it is doing right now, in the same words the parent's status uses, for example "Reading auth.ts".
- Up to five birds fly at once. If there are more helpers, the extra ones are gathered into a single +N tag in the ring.
- A grey bird with a cold blue glow and a slower wingbeat means the helper has finished, but a command it started in the background is still running. The tag names that command.
When a helper finishes
The bird unfolds, stops being a bird, and drifts down as a flat sheet of paper while it fades away. When the last one is gone, the ring disappears.
What the parent does
- When it sends a helper off, the parent makes a short gesture with its hands raised as the bird folds out.
- It keeps its desk until every helper is back, even if its own turn has ended. A desk means "this work is still open", not "typing right now".
- If the parent is still working, it keeps typing. If it is only waiting, it turns partly away from its screen to watch the birds, now and then reaching toward one, and glances back at its monitor.
Helpers never take a desk of their own. That keeps the room readable when an agent starts many helpers at once, and means helpers never use up desks your other agents need.
In the agent list.
You do not have to be looking at the 3D room to know an agent is waiting on helpers.
In the agent list on the right, an agent that has finished its own turn but still has helpers out shows a ◎ with the number of helpers, and a line such as Waiting on 2 agents · Reading auth.ts. The second part is what the first busy helper is doing. Hover over the ◎ to see every helper's tag. The agent counts as working while its helpers are out, so closing it asks you to confirm first.
Helpers do not appear as separate agents in the list or on the screen chips. To follow one closely, watch its bird's tag, or wait for the parent to report back in its terminal.
Workflows and the fleet board.
Sometimes an agent runs a workflow: a planned job with several phases, where many helpers work side by side in lanes. The office shows this on the agent's desk monitor.
- The top shows a FLEET badge, the workflow's name and how long it has been running.
- Under that are the workflow's phases, then one row per lane. A lane shows a small ⠋ mark while it works and a ✓ when it has returned.
- At the bottom, N of M lanes and a progress bar.
- Each lane is also a bird, tagged lane 1, lane 2 and so on, and then with what that lane is doing. With more than five lanes, you will see the +N tag.
The agent stays at its desk until the whole workflow has reported that it is finished, so it never looks idle in the middle of a long run. When the workflow ends, the board leaves the monitor.
The board has room for token counts and a status word, but the office does not fill them in yet. The token figures read 0k and the status reads RUNNING for the whole run. Go by the lanes and the progress bar instead.
What you cannot see.
Birds show the helpers an agent starts directly. A few kinds of background work are not drawn.
| Situation | What you see |
|---|---|
| A helper starts helpers of its own | Only the first helper's bird. Its own helpers are not drawn, so a job fanned out to nine can look like one bird. |
| The agent itself runs a command in the background | No bird. Only a helper's leftover background command turns its bird grey. |
| An agent running on Codex starts helpers | No birds. |
| More than five helpers at once | Five birds and a +N tag. |
| The agent is on a floor you are not looking at | Nothing in the room. The agent list still shows "Waiting on …". |
| Token use and a finished status on the fleet board | Not filled in yet: the tokens read 0k and the status stays RUNNING. |
None of these limits affect the work itself. The helpers run exactly the same whether or not they are drawn. When in doubt, the parent's terminal is the full record.
Common questions.
My agent says it started helpers, but I see no birds.
Check that the agent runs on Claude Code (its model is a Claude model). Codex agents do not show birds. Also check you are on the agent's floor.
The agent's turn ended, but it is still sitting at its desk.
It is waiting for its helpers or a workflow to come back. It will stand up once the last bird has landed or the workflow reports it is done.
A grey bird will not go away.
A helper left a command running in the background, such as a development server. The bird stays until that command ends. You can ask the parent agent to stop it.
I see one bird, but the agent says it used many helpers.
Either there were more than five (look for a +N tag), or a helper started helpers of its own, which are not drawn.