Imagine you have an assistant, and that assistant can call in otherassistants to help. One researches, another writes, another checks for problems — all working at the same time. That's what agents do in Claude Code.

What Are Agents?

Agents are specialized helpers that Claude Code can bring in for specific tasks. Each agent has its own focus area and set of abilities. Think of it like this:

• The main Claude Code — your project manager who coordinates everything
• Agents — specialists who get called in when their expertise is needed

You don't have to do anything special — Claude Code automatically delegates tasks to agents when it makes sense. But you can also call them directly if you want.

What this means for you

Instead of doing one thing at a time, Claude Code can research, build, and verify all at once. A task that might take 10 minutes can happen in 2 because multiple agents work in parallel.

The Built-In Team

Claude Code comes with several agents already built in, each with a different specialty:

Agent	Think of them as...	Best for
Explorer	A quick research assistant	Finding files, searching your project, answering "where is...?" questions
Planner	An architect who draws up plans	Designing how something should work before building it
General Purpose	A do-it-all team member	Complex tasks that need reading, writing, and running things

How It Works in Practice

When you give Claude Code a big task, it can break it into pieces and hand them to different agents. Here's a real example:

> Research my competitor's website, check my own site for broken links,
> and draft a comparison report

Claude Code might handle this by running three agents simultaneously:

1. Agent 1 researches the competitor's website
2. Agent 2 scans your website for broken links
3. Agent 3 prepares the report template

When all three finish, Claude Code combines their findings into your comparison report. What might have taken 15 minutes of back-and-forth happens in a few minutes.

Background work

Agents can also work in the background while you continue your conversation with Claude Code. For example:

> Run a thorough check of my entire website while I work on the new page

The check runs in the background, and Claude Code notifies you when it's done — meanwhile, you keep working on your new page without waiting.

---

Creating Your Own Specialists

Just like you can create shortcuts (skills), you can create your own specialist agents. These are useful when you have a specific type of work that needs a dedicated helper.

Example: A content reviewer

Create a file at .claude/agents/content-reviewer.md:

---
name: content-reviewer
description: Reviews written content for tone, clarity, and brand consistency
---

You are a content reviewer. When asked to review content:

1. Check that the tone matches our brand (friendly, professional, not corporate)
2. Look for jargon that could confuse our customers
3. Verify that calls-to-action are clear
4. Check spelling and grammar
5. Rate the content on a scale of 1-10
6. Suggest specific improvements

Example: A budget tracker

---
name: budget-checker
description: Reviews expenses and flags anything unusual
---

You are a financial assistant. When reviewing expenses:

1. Look at all recent transactions
2. Compare spending to the monthly budget
3. Flag any unusual or large expenses
4. Calculate remaining budget by category
5. Provide a brief summary with recommendations

Example: A quality checker for your website

---
name: site-checker
description: Checks the website for common problems
---

Check the website thoroughly:

1. Look for broken links or missing images
2. Check that all pages load correctly
3. Verify the contact form works
4. Make sure mobile layouts look good
5. Check for slow-loading pages
6. Report all findings with specific page references

What this means for you

You can build a virtual team tailored to your specific business or project. A content person, a quality person, a research person — each knows exactly what to do because you trained them with your instructions.

---

How to Use Your Agents

You have several ways to call an agent:

> @content-reviewer check the new About page
> @budget-checker review this month's expenses
> @site-checker run a full audit of our website

Or just describe what you need and let Claude Code figure out which agent to use:

> Review the content on our homepage for tone and clarity

Claude Code will recognize this is a content review task and automatically delegate to your content-reviewer agent.

Managing your agents

• Type /agents to see all available agents, create new ones, or edit existing ones
• Agents are just text files — you can edit them anytime
• Put them in your project folder for project-specific agents, or in your home folder for agents you want everywhere

---

Agent Teams (Advanced)

For really big tasks, you can have multiple agents work together as a team. They can even pass information between each other — like a real team collaborating.

> Have the content-reviewer check the About page, then pass the findings
> to the site-checker to verify the fixes look right

This is an advanced feature you probably won't need right away, but it's incredibly powerful for complex workflows.

---

Agent Memory

Your agents can remember things between sessions — like a real team member who doesn't forget what happened last week.

For example, your budget-checker might remember:

• Your usual spending patterns
• Vendors you've flagged as approved
• Budget thresholds you've set

This happens automatically when you enable memory in your agent's settings. Each agent keeps its own notes, separate from other agents.

---

Tips

• Start with built-in agents — they handle most common tasks well
• Create custom agents for repetitive specialized work — anything you describe the same way every time is a good candidate
• Give agents specific roles — a "content reviewer" is better than a "general helper"
• Let Claude Code delegate — you don't always need to call agents by name; often just describing what you need is enough
• Use background agents for slow tasks — things like full site audits or thorough reviews can run while you do other work