Task-tool subagents never see the MCP initialize instructions and hold
the MCP tools only as deferred names they rarely think to load — so
delegated work bypassed codegraph almost entirely (measured ~1 of 9
forced-delegation runs touched it; the rest did 30-50 grep/read calls).
Two additions close the gap:
- CLI: `codegraph explore` and `codegraph node` call the same ToolHandler
as the MCP tools and print identical output — the graph for any agent
with a shell (subagents, Gemini CLI, raw Codex, humans).
- Installer: each agent target (claude/codex/gemini/opencode) writes a
short marker-fenced CodeGraph section into its instructions file —
the one channel subagents DO receive — naming both surfaces. Upsert
self-heals the stale pre-#529 long block; uninstall strips it; re-runs
are byte-equal unchanged. (#529's duplication argument bounded the
size: four lines, commands only.)
A/B (excalidraw, sonnet/high, forced Explore-agent delegation): without
the block, subagent codegraph usage ~1/9 runs; with it, 4/4 — subagents
ToolSearch-load the MCP tools and run explore 5-7x, best runs with ZERO
Read/grep (80-95s vs 150-197s baseline). The block's mechanism: the
parent relays the note into the task prompt, making the deferred tool
names salient.
Contract tests updated to the new expectations (write + self-heal
replace the #529 strip-only behavior); README install/guidance sections
refreshed (they also still described the pre-#817/#818 tool surface).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Colby McHenry
c1d92c3755