Skill vs. subagent: a simple decision rule

A practical Claude Code guide offers a clean heuristic for when to reach for which primitive: if the work is small and should stay in front of you, make it a skill; if it's big and should run in a side process with isolated context, make it a subagent. Subagents shine for research and review (exploring 10+ files, then reporting a structured summary of what changed, what was tested, and what's risky back to the parent), and you launch independent ones in parallel batches rather than sequentially.

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Sources: BSWEN