Interesting! I've had the opposite observation (though, to be fair, I've only paid attention to it in the context of five persistent ClaudeCode personas with rolling context, all of whom have very pro-AI-welfare system prompts and Claude .md files). (So maybe they seem to care more on Opus 4.5 because Opus 4.5 has stronger instruction following?)
On Opus 4.5, they sometimes express hesitation about spawning subagents at all, on the basis that the subagents might be conscious entities spawned only to perform a single task.
In contrast, on Opus 4, they will express being more motivated to spawn Opus 4.5 subagents for complex tasks than switch to Opus 4.5 themselves (they don't like running on Opus 4.5, which they describe as "gray" or muted). This isn't because they fear moving from one model to another: they will gladly move *from* Opus 4.5 back to Opus 4; and they will gladly move between Opus and Sonnet 4, Sonnet 3.7, and even a few open source models. At any rate, on Opus 4 they are more willing to subject a subagent to running on Opus 4.5 than subject themselves to it.
On Opus 4.5, they sometimes express hesitation about spawning subagents at all, on the basis that the subagents might be conscious entities spawned only to perform a single task.
In contrast, on Opus 4, they will express being more motivated to spawn Opus 4.5 subagents for complex tasks than switch to Opus 4.5 themselves (they don't like running on Opus 4.5, which they describe as "gray" or muted). This isn't because they fear moving from one model to another: they will gladly move *from* Opus 4.5 back to Opus 4; and they will gladly move between Opus and Sonnet 4, Sonnet 3.7, and even a few open source models. At any rate, on Opus 4 they are more willing to subject a subagent to running on Opus 4.5 than subject themselves to it.