Does anyone know if there’s a way to change the default model that Cursor uses when it automatically spawns a sub-agent?
From what I can tell, these auto-created sub-agents seem to default to something like “Composer” (often Composer 1.5), and I haven’t found any setting to override that behavior.
I checked the docs and settings, but they only mention selecting a model for the main agent or for custom modes—not for implicitly created sub-agents.
From digging around the forum, it sounds like:
There’s currently no official way to set a default model for auto-spawned sub-agents
In some cases, sub-agents (especially nested ones) fall back to Composer 1.5 regardless of the parent model
So my questions:
Is there any hidden config / workaround for this?
Can this be controlled via agent files, rules, or environment settings?
Or is this just a current limitation of Cursor’s agent system?
Would love to experiment with different models here, especially for cost/performance reasons.
Hey, good question. It depends on your pricing plan type:
Request-based legacy pricing:
Built-in subagents Explore, Bash, and Browser always use Composer, and you can’t change the model. The only option is to enable MAX mode, then subagents inherit the parent agent’s model. This costs more requests though.
Token-based pricing:
For custom subagents, you can set the model directly in the .md file using the model field in the frontmatter, like model: claude-4.6-sonnet or model: inherit to inherit from the parent.
The team is aware of this request. More flexible model settings for subagents are on the radar. For now, for specific tasks I’d recommend creating custom subagents with the model you need.