Specialized Subagents

User guide. For the architectural design, protocol contracts, and model role resolution of subagents, see Subagents Architecture.

Core Soothe ships five built-in subagents: planner, deep_research, academic_research, browser_use, and veritas. Semantic skill discovery uses the daemon-shared Skillify service via the search_skills tool (see skillify in config). Additional optional delegated agents (e.g. weaver and other community plugins) are maintained in the soothe-plugins package—see that project’s README and docs.

Overview

Subagent Slash Command Best For
Deep Research /deep_research <query> Public web research, comparisons, how-tos
Academic Research /academic_research <query> Papers, literature reviews, citations
Planner /plan or /plan <prompt> Plan-mode routing
Browser Use /browser_use <url> Browser automation and web interaction
Veritas (auto-invoked) Clarification auto-answerer in autonomous mode

Semantic skill search is not a subagent — use the search_skills tool or ask the agent to search deferred skills. Configure via top-level skillify: (see YAML reference).

Local codebase analysis uses the main agent’s file tools (read_file, grep, glob) — not the research subagents.

Deep Research (deep_research)

Iterative public web research: search → crawl top URLs → reflect → adaptive report.

Capabilities:

  • Web search (wizsearch / configured engines)
  • Crawl-on-discovery for top result URLs (shared url_crawl toolkit)
  • Adaptive report sections (comparison, how-to, landscape, …)
  • Mandatory Scope banner (web sources only; no local repo files)

Usage:

/deep_research Compare vector databases for RAG workloads
/deep_research What are the latest LangGraph checkpoint patterns?

Effort levels (default: normal):

Level Reflection loops Crawl per search Use when
normal 2 top 3 URLs Faster lookup
thorough 4 top 5 URLs Deeper investigation

Set in config (effort: thorough) or in the task description (effort: thorough on the first line).

Configuration:

subagents:
  deep_research:
    enabled: true
    config:
      effort: normal  # normal | thorough

For academic papers and literature reviews, use academic_research instead.

Academic Research (academic_research)

Iterative academic literature research via DeepXiv search, with the same crawl-on-discovery and adaptive report pattern.

Capabilities:

  • Academic paper / preprint search (DeepXiv)
  • URL crawl for paper pages (shared url_crawl toolkit)
  • Academic report scenarios (literature review, paper comparison, method survey, …)
  • Mandatory Scope banner (academic sources only; no local repo files)

Usage:

/academic_research Literature review on retrieval-augmented generation 2024-2026
/academic_research Compare BERT vs modern embedding models for code search
Effort levels: same normal thorough profiles as deep_research.

Configuration:

subagents:
  academic_research:
    enabled: true
    config:
      effort: normal

Requires DeepXiv credentials (DEEPXIV_API_KEY / DEEPXIV_TOKEN) when configured.

Browser Use Agent

Browser automation specialist for web navigation and interaction.

Usage:

/browser_use Navigate to https://example.com and extract the main heading

Configuration:

subagents:
  browser_use:
    enabled: true

Veritas Agent

Intent-grounded clarification auto-answerer for autonomous mode. Invoked automatically by AutoClarificationPolicy when the loop pauses on ask_user.

Planner Agent

Planning and task decomposition for complex multi-step tasks.

Usage:

/plan
/plan Create a REST API with authentication and rate limiting

Subagent Routing

Slash Commands 

/deep_research <query>      # Public web research
/academic_research <query>  # Academic literature research
/plan <prompt>              # Planner
/browser_use <url>          # Browser automation

Without a slash command, queries go to the main agent.

Examples 

/deep_research Compare Redis vs Memcached for session caching
/academic_research Survey papers on agent memory architectures
/browser_use Navigate to https://news.ycombinator.com and list the top 5 stories

Optional Plugin Subagents

The soothe-plugins package provides additional delegate subagents (e.g. weaver, claude). Install soothe-plugins and follow its README for configuration.