Run 002 · subagent orchestration
Claude Code conducting Grok 4.5 subagents. On tape, with the bill.
One Claude Code session gets one prompt: spawn two Grok 4.5 workers in parallel, have each build a browser game, verify the results. The workers run headless in their own isolated Linux container. Below: the uncut TUI recording (4× speed), the token meters on both sides, and what the same run would bill on metered APIs.
The recording
The real session, sped up 4×: prompt in, both workers spawn in parallel (visible in the agent list at the bottom), files land, the conductor verifies and reports. Payoff: the two games it shipped.
The bill
Token counts as recorded. Both sides ran on flat-rate subscriptions (Claude Max, SuperGrok), so the actual marginal cost of this run was $0 — the metered column prices identical usage at each vendor's published API rates.
| Role | Wall clock | Tokens | API-equivalent | Actual cost |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Claude Fable 5 — conductor Claude Code TUI · plans, spawns, verifies, reports |
1:42 | 6.8k out · 662k cache read · 227k cache write1 | $3.84 | $0 · Claude Max |
Grok 4.5 — builder ×2 grok CLI headless · isolated container · snake 0:24, breakout 0:36 |
0:36 (parallel) | ~6k in · ~9k out2 | $0.07 | $0 · SuperGrok |
1 Metered at Anthropic's published rates: $10/M input, $12.50/M 5-min cache writes, $1/M cache reads, $50/M output. 93% of the conductor's input was cache reads. The two thin Haiku relay wrappers that shell out to the container add roughly 56k mostly-cached tokens (<$0.05) on top. 2 The grok CLI reports no token usage headless — estimated from the actual session transcripts (chars÷4), priced at xAI's published $2/M in, $6/M out.
What the workers shipped
Untouched output, served exactly as Grok 4.5 wrote it — click through and play. One note for honesty: snake spawns close to the right wall, so steer immediately.
Method
- Claude Code (Fable 5) runs interactively in a 152×42 terminal, recorded with asciinema — the video is the real TUI, not a re-enactment.
- The conductor gets a single prompt asking for two parallel grok-worker subagents, one game each, then verification and a report.
- Each worker is a thin relay that dispatches the brief to a headless grok -m grok-4.5 inside an isolated Incus container.
- Games are published untouched. Token counts come from the Claude session log and the grok session transcripts; nothing is extrapolated beyond the noted estimate.