The Agent Can Suggest Swarm — You Decide

August 11, 2026

When the agent gets into a task and finds it should really be split across parallel workers, it can now suggest moving the turn to Swarm. Nothing switches without you: a consent banner pauses the turn with the agent's reasoning, and you choose. The same works in reverse — ask a Swarm session to go back to the single agent and the planner raises the banner instead of pointing you at the mode selector. A new Safety Center setting lets you skip the question in either direction.

What you can do

• Get a consent banner whenever the agent suggests Swarm — with its one-line reasoning, on every session type, whether you're on Auto or picked your model yourself
• Switch to Swarm in one click and watch the same turn re-run as a planned, parallel workflow — or Stay on Agent and the agent carries on single-threaded with sub-workers where they help
• Tick Don't ask again on the banner, or set it in Settings → Safety Center → Switching to Swarm mode: Ask (default), Always allow (switch silently), or Never (the agent stops suggesting Swarm entirely)
• Keep your model and settings through the switch — the Swarm runs on what you picked
• Review the plan as usual before any workers run — escalating drafts a plan, it does not start spending straight away
• Stay in Swarm for later turns once a turn has escalated, while short follow-ups drop back to the single agent automatically
• Leave Swarm the same way — on a session you pinned to Swarm yourself, the planner can now offer the switch back: Switch to Agent flips the session to the single agent for good (your saved plan stays put and resumes if you return), Stay in Swarm keeps going as planned

Where this shows up

You ask for a competitive teardown covering financials, market position, and product. The agent starts, sees the shape of it, and suggests a swarm — three research streams in parallel instead of one after another. The banner shows its reasoning; you click Switch to Swarm and review the plan it drafts.

You'd rather it never asks. You set Switching to Swarm mode to Always allow in the Safety Center, and from then on the agent moves big turns to Swarm on its own — or Never, and the suggestion disappears from your sessions entirely.

You escalated an hour ago and now just want one heading changed in a deliverable. You are not put through a swarm for that — the quick turn quietly goes to the single agent, and your next real piece of work goes back to the swarm.

You ran a big workup in Swarm and now want the rest of the conversation as one continuous thread. You type "switch back to single agent" — the planner offers the switch on the same banner, you click Switch to Agent, and the session carries on single-threaded with the plan saved for later.

Heads up

Swarm costs more than the single agent, which is exactly why the switch is consent-first: with the default Ask setting it cannot happen without your click, and even on Always allow the plan review step is still there before any workers run.