[BUG] Task tool missing when launching session with --agent (tools not inherited even when undefined)

Found 3 possible duplicate issues:

1. https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues/11028
2. https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues/12994
3. https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues/11895

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hey this is very annoying to me. the workaround is to make a skill instead and add -p "/myagent /agentsubskill1 /agentsubskill2" to my claude startup but this is not elegant.

context: I want a research orchestrator agent that needs some skill preloaded (that are shared with research scientist subagent), this is why a skill is not optimal

I am still having issues with this. What is going on with the Task tool and custom agents? Not sure why this has gone unresolved for so long

+1 This is prevents having complex multi-agent workflows which are required for efficient context management. If the plan is to not fix this, then please indicate so.. but this should be a trivial change.

I also am seeing this issue, and further, even if you DO explicitly add 'Task' to the tools list, it's STILL unavailable. It doesn't seem like there's any way to make a main-context agent that can spawn subagent or teammates, even though the docs clearly say this should be possible.

Also the suggested workaround of "spawn the orchestration agent from the main context using the Task tool" is... honestly gibberish. The user can't invoke the task tool themself, and even if you prompt the main context agent to do so, the spawned subagent STILL has no access to the Task tool for team management.

For anyone trying to use Agent Teams with a custom agent

Just wanted to share what worked for me, in case it helps others hitting this.

I had "agent": "my-agent" in my user-level ~/.claude/settings.json (not using the --agent CLI flag). This seems to trigger the same issue — the Task tool (the one that spawns teammates) was silently missing from every interactive session.

This also means Agent Teams do not work — TeamCreate, TaskCreate, SendMessage are all there, but without the Task tool you cannot actually spawn any teammates.

What worked for me

I just renamed the key in settings.json to disable it temporarily:

// Before
"agent": "my-agent"

// After
"_agent": "my-agent"

After restarting, Agent Teams worked as expected — 3 teammates spawned in parallel (in-process mode), all completed their tasks, and shutdown/cleanup went smoothly.

Not ideal since you lose your custom agent, but at least it unblocks Agent Teams until this gets fixed.

Environment

• Claude Code v2.1.37
• WSL2 (Ubuntu) + WezTerm
• teammateMode: "in-process"
• CLAUDE_CODE_EXPERIMENTAL_AGENT_TEAMS: "1" in settings.json env

@shostako Yes, using teams without a custom agent works fine. It's just the custom agent that's broken.

2 workarounds I found:

• Turn your custom agent into a Skill, use that skill to start the team. This may be what people meant by 'just use Task to start the team'. Still you lose a lot of what would make a custom agent good here.
• Have your main context non-agent start the team with your team lead agent + teammates, and have the team lead 'request' agents from the main context, but still 'act' as team lead - this is messier.

Yes, confirming I'm seeing the same thing - Not trying to use a Team just using --agent.

With further testing today, I can see some prior things I reported were mistakes.

1. If starting without --agent team leader can spawn teammates 'raw' or from agents. Team members cannot spawn subagents. Prior confirmation they could seems to have been hallucination on their part(s).
2. If starting with --agent, neither team leader nor teammates can spawn teammates or subagents. This is basically non-functional.

Possible workaround:

• Have team members 'request' agents from the team leader, who can spawn and task those agents for the team members
• This is sub-optimal as cross-team messaging will explode for requesting agent spawning, tasking, shutdown, etc.

Possible workaround:

• Include several 'helper' agents in the team of types you expect to be used, e.g. Read, Explore, Write, etc. These will need to be 'variants' of these agents that are instructed to idle and wait for tasking from the team.
• Instruct all teammates to add tasks for the helper agents to acquire and complete.
• Helper agents act as a common 'pool' of subagents for team's use
• This is still sub-optimal: we save on spawn/destroy messaging, but messaging from tasks & returns throughout the team will still add plenty of 'noise'.

This is likely one of the big problems with agent teams using huge amounts of tokens, right now. Every action is/must be done by the teammates directly, rather than using subagents like Explore, etc.

Working around this by creating 'pools' of agents also fails. Individual agents claim the "cannot see any team members" of the expected agent types, and simply perform Reads/Writes themselves, rather than creating or delegating tasks to the team, even if their permission mode is set to delegate, seemingly ignoring this setting.

Closing for now — inactive for too long. Please open a new issue if this is still relevant.

This issue has been automatically locked since it was closed and has not had any activity for 7 days. If you're experiencing a similar issue, please file a new issue and reference this one if it's relevant.