A developer spawns a Claude subagent to process a customer refund request. The subagent fails to apply the correct refund policy even though that policy was discussed in the main conversation earlier. What is the most likely cause?

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B. Subagents do not automatically inherit the parent agent's conversation context; the policy must be passed explicitly. Context isolation is a core design principle: subagents start with a clean context and do NOT inherit the parent conversation. Any information the subagent needs — including the relevant policy — must be explicitly passed by the coordinator when invoking the subagent. This is intentional: it prevents context pollution, improves security, and makes subagent behavior predictable.

A developer spawns a Claude subagent to process a customer refund request. The subagent fails to apply the correct refund policy even though that policy was discussed in the main conversation earlier. What is the most likely cause?

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