[FEATURE] Inherited Subagents

Preflight Checklist

• [x] I have searched existing requests and this feature hasn't been requested yet
• [x] This is a single feature request (not multiple features)

Problem Statement

I have subagent definitions that often do similar things, but with different methods or attributes. This means that I have to almost copy and paste a prompt when making a new agent, then telling it what to do differently than an existing one.

For example, say I have two subagents to make web UIs for a client. One client has specific requirements; another client has different requirements. I have to have two separate UI agents to do each or explain to the agent what to do differently based on what each client wants.

Proposed Solution

I would like to be able to run /agents inside the TUI that has another option called "Inherit from another agent", choose the agent I want to inherit from, then enter its specific requirements/dialect that is different from the main agent, then it would create one with most of the same instructions as the main agent, with instructions specific to my requirements.

Alternative Solutions

Creating many agents with similar attributes manually or making my own skill/slash command to do this.

Priority

Low - Nice to have

Feature Category

Interactive mode (TUI)

Use Case Example

At my machine shop, I have different departments that want different things. Here is how I would use this:

1. Create a base UI agent using /agents with my specified requirements for most applications (call it "ui-engineer")
2. Use /agents again, choose "Inherit from agent" -> "inherit from ui-engineer", enter specific instructions for a department (like Procurement)
3. Claude automatically creates a new subagent called "ui-engineer-procurement" with instructions from the main ui-engineer that I can use on Procurement departmental projects.

Additional Context

_No response_