Workflow agent count in /workflows UI is off by one
Open 💬 0 comments Opened Jun 11, 2026 by mityorn
Description
When using the Workflow tool with /workflows to monitor progress, the agent count displayed in the CLI UI is consistently one higher than the actual number of subagent .jsonl files on disk.
Reproduction
- Launch a workflow that spawns multiple agents via
agent()calls - Monitor with
/workflows— note the "X out of Y agents done" count - Compare against actual agent files:
ls -1 <workflow-dir>/agent-*.jsonl | wc -l
Observed behavior
The UI count is always exactly 1 higher than the number of subagent files:
- When 33 agent
.jsonlfiles exist on disk, UI shows "X out of 34" - When 36 agent
.jsonlfiles exist on disk, UI shows "X out of 37"
This was consistent across multiple checks over a ~2 hour workflow run.
Expected behavior
The count should reflect only the subagents spawned by agent() calls, not the workflow orchestrator itself (if that's what's being counted).
Environment
- Claude Code v2.1.168
- Workflow with ~36 subagents across 5 phases using
agent(),parallel(), andpipeline() - Linux (Ubuntu)
🤖 Generated with Claude Code