As of the latest update to Cursor iDE 3, my orchestrator setup is not working anymore.
Before the update, the delegation worked perfectly, having a central agent that delegated work to subagents, while working through a 12-step custom pipeline, built for adding or debugging complex features.
Steps to Reproduce
Before:
/orchestrate command would start the /react-manager agent, that would delegate the 12-stage pipeline work to specialized subagents, as you can see in the attached document
Now:
/orchestrate seems to start the /react-manager, how ever, the delgation is interrupted after planning, and all the code is executed by the main agent
Expected Behavior
The /orchestrate command should start the /react-manager agent, that delegates the pipeline work to subagents
Hey, thanks for the detailed report. This is a known limitation with nested subagents in the current build. It’s not a regression specifically from 3.2.21, it’s more like something that’s been there for a while and is showing up more clearly now.
What’s happening: the subagent system prompt includes a reminder telling it not to spawn additional subagents unless that’s explicitly requested. On top of that, the ability for a subagent to spawn other subagents (deep nesting like manager → subagent → more subagents) is currently limited. So your /react-manager ends up doing all the work itself instead of delegating, because the model acting as a subagent refuses to spawn further subagents.
Workaround for now is a flat structure: have the main agent delegate directly to specialist subagents (one level of nesting), without a middle orchestrator that delegates further. So instead of main -> /react-manager -> [specialists], do main -> [specialists] directly, and split the 12-step pipeline into a series of calls from the main agent.
The issue team is aware, but I can’t share an ETA for a fix yet. If I get an update, I’ll post it in the thread.
I see, thanks for the information, i’ll rewrite my orchestrator then, and bypass the middle man, and redefine the agent as a rule. Let me know when and if this gets resolved. Have a great day.
Over the last few months, we’ve made solid improvements to how subagents work. Nested delegation, where a subagent starts other subagents, is now supported up to 2 levels deep, which matches your original topology main -> /react-manager -> specialists.
If you want to go back to the original setup where /react-manager delegates pipeline work to specialized subagents, please try again on the latest version. The current stable version is 3.16.29. Keep in mind delegation is still controlled by the prompt, not enforced by structure, so in rare cases the model may still do some of the work itself.
If it’s working now, no need to reply. If everything is still happening in the main agent, please start a new thread with current details like version, steps to reproduce, and what exactly you’re seeing, and we’ll take another look. I’m going to close this thread for now.