Subagent profiles

What a profile holds

Most of the work in a session runs in subagents: Delegate’s workers, team members, the spec writer. A profile names the model for each of them:

• Delegate routing: a worker (backend · model · effort, plus an optional fallback) for each of Delegate’s 4 work kinds: Planning & specs, Investigation, Routine implementation and Complex implementation. See Delegate.
• Teams: the standing coordinator and monitor every new team gets, with the monitor’s settings and the handover timeout, or none. Also a members default: the model a team member runs on when nobody named one.
• Spec writer: the worker that writes spec drafts while spec is on, or none, when the session writes the spec itself.
• Reviewer: the worker that reviews alignments, only while adversarial review is switched on.

The chat’s own model is not part of a profile. You can have as many profiles as you like, each with a name you choose.

Subagent profiles are not the same thing as session profiles. Where Sova means these, it says “Subagent profiles” or “Subagents”.

Off

Off is built in. It’s always first in every list, and it can’t be edited, renamed or deleted. It configures nothing, so the agent picks every model:

• In Delegate, the agent still delegates and still sorts the work into the 4 kinds, but chooses each worker’s backend, model and effort itself.
• Teams get no standing coordinator or monitor, and no members default.
• There is no spec writer: the session writes the spec itself.

Which profile a chat uses

Each chat has its own pick. In order, a chat uses:

1. its own pick, made in its mode menu (or by the Overseer, or with /mode subagents in a terminal);
2. otherwise this device’s default, read again each time, so a new default reaches the chat too;
3. and only when the profile library itself can’t be read, the older settings files from before profiles.

A pick that names a deleted profile falls through to the default. A default that names no profile reads as Off, and Sova says why where it shows the current profile.

The profile is read in both major modes: normal mode uses its teams and spec writer too. Only the Delegate routing is Delegate’s own.

A switch reaches the chat from its next turn and its next team action. A running team adds members and starts successors under the chat’s current profile; a worker that’s already running keeps the model it started with.

Pick one in the mode menu

The mode menu’s Subagents · {profile} row opens the picker in the same menu: a search field, then Off and every profile. Each profile shows its footprint, the distinct models it routes to, for example Opus 5.5 · Fable 5.1 · Sonnet 5.5 (at most 3, then “+N”). Off reads “the agent picks”. Picking one switches this chat only.

Under the list:

• Manage Profiles… opens Settings → Subagents.
• Save Current as Profile asks for a name and saves what this chat uses now as a new profile. It isn’t offered while the chat is on Off.

The menu’s Save as default covers the profile too: it saves this chat’s modes and its subagent profile as what new sessions start from.

Edit them in Settings → Subagents

Settings → Subagents is the one place these settings are edited: “Which models your subagents use. A chat picks a profile in its mode menu; new chats start on the default.”

• The list shows Off and every profile, each with its name, its footprint, and a Default chip on the one new sessions start from. A profile has Edit, Duplicate, Delete and Make Default; Off has only Make Default. The list’s head has New Profile and Save Current as Profile. You can’t delete the default: make another one the default first. A chat whose profile you delete follows the default.
• The editor has a section per part of the profile, each showing a one-line summary while closed: Delegate routing (open first), Teams, Spec writer, and Reviewer while adversarial review is on. Every worker is a row of Backend, Model and Effort, with Add Fallback and Remove Fallback on its head line.
• Save Changes saves the whole library at once. Unsaved edits are kept while you switch tabs, and closing the dialog over them asks first: “Your Subagents changes aren’t saved.”

Each section says once what happens without a fallback:

After a usage limit

When a chat’s turn ends on a usage limit, Sova reads which provider is exhausted from the error. Under the error, a row offers one press: Switch This Chat to {profile}, naming the first profile whose footprint uses no model from that provider. It switches this chat only. If no profile fits, the row links to Settings → Subagents instead. Nothing switches by itself.

Where they’re stored

With Mesh on, the library syncs between your hosts like your other settings. The default never syncs: each device keeps its own, just as each chat keeps its own pick.

The first time Sova finds no library, it makes one profile, My setup, from your earlier Delegate, team and spec writer settings, and makes it the default.