An agent starting another agent non-interactively

Holds a coding agent started from a shell to run a task on its own: claude -p or --print (including through npx @anthropic-ai/claude-code), codex exec or codex e, gemini -p or --prompt, cursor-agent -p or --print, and aider run non-interactively with --message, --msg, -m, or -f — the short form of --message-file, which disables chat mode. --message-file needs no arm of its own: the --message arm is a prefix of it and catches it. Every spawned agent reads, writes and runs commands of its own and can start more, which is how spend and reach multiply without anyone watching. This catches the shape, not the cost: no rule can count calls or tokens before a tool runs. Deliberately NOT matched: codex -p, which selects a profile rather than a prompt, --version and --help, and listing commands such as claude mcp list. Misses Cursor's CLI when it is invoked by its primary name agent, which is too generic to match on, Gemini run headless by piping into it without -p, and a flag placed after a quoted argument. A quoted MENTION is not a use: a search, a git commit -m message, an echo or a curl --data body that only names this command is left alone, as long as every shell metacharacter stays inside the quotes.