Add subagents to a Rovo agent
Terminology used in this page
Subagents: Simple agents that can handle specific scenarios on behalf of its parent agent.
Instructions: The prompt that defines your agent's goals and purpose. Your agent uses its instructions when responding to prompts.
Custom trigger: The situation or user sentiment that, when matched to a prompt, will run a subagent.
Subagents can help you make more complex and powerful agents so you can accomplish a wider variety of tasks.
It’s ideal for most Rovo agents to have a specific purpose when you create them, and skills can help the agent handle specialized tasks.
Subagents, however, are a way to handle specific scenarios that would be difficult to add to your parent agent’s instructions. Subagents work in the background, and can respond to relevant prompts through their parent agent.
You can think of it like giving your agent a team of assistants that specialize in certain areas. Your agent can hand off tasks to a particular assistant that has all the necessary context to do the job well.
To keep things simple, it will always look like you're talking to the one parent agent, regardless of any subagents invoked in a conversation.
Create and manage subagents for your agent
Subagents are optional. They can have their own instructions, routing description, knowledge, and tools.
For example, you might create:
A support-focused subagent that answers product questions from documentation.
A planning-focused subagent that turns a request into a structured project plan.
A reporting-focused subagent that summarizes recent work or updates.
The parent agent can delegate work to many subagents simultaneously within a single task when it’s helpful (just like a skill). This unlocks richer, multi-domain answers without extra setup.
Each subagent gets its own context window — only the main agent's delegated info and conversation history enter it. Subagents also only return summarized results, without all of the internal skill outputs, keeping the main agent's context clean and concise.
Add a subagent to an agent
Navigate to the Atlassian Studio app in the app switcher.
Select Agents from the left-side navigation to see a list of the agents you’ve created.
Choose the agent you’d like to edit.
In the Details tab, select Add subagent.
Provide a name for the subagent so you and any collaborators can identify it easily and understand its purpose.
Write a trigger for the subagent by prompting the agent on when it should run the subagent.
Add the instructions, tools, skills, and knowledge you’d like the subagent to use.
When you’re finished designing the subagent, select Save.
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