Make MultiAgentV2 spawned-agent context prompt configurable

Open 💬 0 comments Opened Apr 10, 2026 by ignatremizov

What variant of Codex are you using?

CLI

What feature would you like to see?

Make the MultiAgentV2 spawned-agent context prompt configurable, or at least only inject it when history/context is actually forked.

Today codex-rs/core/src/tools/handlers/multi_agents_v2/spawn.rs unconditionally appends SPAWN_AGENT_DEVELOPER_INSTRUCTIONS to every spawned child agent:

<spawned_agent_context>
... Treat the next user message as your assigned task, and use the forked history only as background context.
</spawned_agent_context>

The problem is that this prompt is added even when the child is spawned with no forked history (for example fork_turns = none, or when no forked context is otherwise provided).

That creates two issues:

  • the prompt describes forked history even when there is none
  • there is currently no config knob to disable or override this block for custom multi-agent workflows

It looks like later work improved surrounding spawn behavior (parent model/config inheritance, role-level fork defaults, prompt cache keys, etc.), but I could not find a way to:

  • disable SPAWN_AGENT_DEVELOPER_INSTRUCTIONS
  • replace it with a custom block
  • gate it on whether forked context is actually present

A few reasonable options:

  • only inject this prompt when fork_turns actually results in forked history/context
  • add a config option to disable it
  • add a config option to override the text
  • split it into two variants: one for forked children, one for no-history children

Additional information

Current code path:

  • codex-rs/core/src/tools/handlers/multi_agents_v2/spawn.rs

Specifically, the block is appended unconditionally after spawn config is built, independent of fork_turns / fork mode.

This matters for users building custom multi-agent workflows because the injected prompt becomes part of the child agent's behavior contract even when it is semantically wrong for the spawn mode.

View original on GitHub ↗