reliquary/docs/workpad/reports/2026-09-22-00-agent-write-capabilities-fix.md

Agent Write-Capabilities Fix

Date: 2026-09-22 Scope: Spire skill and agent definitions

Problem

The Explore and Plan agent types in Claude Code are READ-ONLY -- they cannot use Edit, Write, or NotebookEdit. Spire's delegation guidance promoted these types as preferred "safe leaves" (because they cannot sub-delegate), without warning that they also cannot produce file artifacts. This caused Igor and other coordinators to dispatch Explore agents for research and investigation tasks that needed to write reports, designs, or plans to the workpad.

Changes

plugins/spire/skills/igor/references/model-tiers.md

• Added subagent_type column to the delegation table with explicit values for each tier ("researcher", "scout", "search", "adept", "athanor", or "omit" for general-purpose).
• Added scout and search rows for read-only lookup tiers.
• Replaced the old "Sub-delegation guard" section (which presented Explore/Plan as desirable defaults) with a new "Write-capability guard" section that explicitly warns about their read-only limitation and recommends Spire's pinned agents instead.
• Kept the sub-delegation guard as a separate section focused only on which types can spawn children.

plugins/spire/skills/igor/SKILL.md

• Replaced "Dispatch an Explore agent" with "Dispatch a search agent" (line 19).
• Replaced "one-shot Explore agent" with "one-shot search or scout agent" (line 105).
• Added subagent_type / model column to the delegation table with explicit values for every row.

plugins/spire/skills/zathras/SKILL.md

• Replaced "Explore agent or adept" with "search agent or adept" in the delegation table.
• Added subagent_type / model column to the delegation table.

plugins/spire/agents/adept.md

• Replaced "Dispatch Explore subagents" with "Dispatch search subagents" in both genesis (line 50) and consultation (line 77) sections.

Principle

• Explore and Plan: only for pure lookups or pure planning where the answer returns in agent reply text, not as a file.
• scout and search: preferred read-only alternatives (Spire-pinned, tool-restricted).
• researcher: the correct choice for research that produces a written report.
• Omit subagent_type (general-purpose default) for any task needing write access that does not match a pinned agent.
• model parameter remains required on all Agent calls.