Sub-agents in OpenClaw aren’t created by a special “mode” in the prompt — they only exist if the agent actually calls the sessions_spawn tool.
What to do instead:
- Prompt it very explicitly to spawn one
- Example: “Spawn a sub-agent to do X. Use the
sessions_spawntool. Report back with a short summary + next steps.”
- Verify it spawned / monitor it
- Run:
/subagents list - Then you can inspect:
/subagents info <id|#>/subagents log <id|#> [limit] [tools]/subagents send <id|#> <message>/subagents stop <id|#|all>
- If
/subagents listshows nothing, it usually means:
- Your current model isn’t reliably doing tool calls (common with some local/cheaper models), or