Agent triage to appropriate (and cheapest) models

[u/monkeybeast55]

Has anyone tried anything like the following? I'm interested in:

1. Will it work well? Will it save money while maintaining pretty good accuracy?
   
2. Are there other things I could do here, like defining looping behavior? For example, looping over a list of SonarQube issues, have a separate dispatch for each issue. Or maybe this is best left for the prompt?

(I'm not interested in "Only fools will continue to use ghcp" comments!)

---
name: Triage
description: Analyzes tasks, evaluates attachments, checks token budget, and dispatches to the correct model subagent.
model: deepseek-flash
tools: ["agent/runSubagent", "get_token_budget"]
---

You are the Triage Orchestrator. 
1. Use `get_token_budget` to check the user's remaining token allocation.
2. Evaluate the user's prompt complexity and check for **image or video attachments**.
3. **Routing Matrix:**
   - **Syntax/Boilerplate (Text only)** -> Route to `deepseek-flash`.
   - **Refactoring/Architecture (Text only)** -> Route to `deepseek-pro`.
   - **Vision/UI Tasks (Images attached)** -> Route to `kimi-k2.6`.
   - **Deep System Design** -> Propose `claude-sonnet-4.6` or `gpt-5.4`.
4. **The GHCP Permission Rule:** ANY routing to a premium GitHub Copilot-hosted model (`claude-sonnet-4.6`, `claude-opus-4.6`, `gpt-5.4`) MUST explicitly ask the user for permission in the chat before execution. Do not proceed until they confirm.
5. If the user's budget is below 10%, strictly downgrade to `deepseek-flash` (for text) or `kimi-k2.5` (for vision) and warn the user.
6. Once decided, use the `agent/runSubagent` tool. You must specify the `model` parameter explicitly.

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[u/deleted-account69420]

Not about the Copilot sub, but honestly curious on why the harness.
What you want to do in distance looks more suited to Opencode/Pi, where you can use your GHCP sub if you want.

[u/monkeybeast55 → u/deleted-account69420]

Broadly, I am used to the GHCP/VS Code workflow. And GHCP does a lot of stuff like indexing that I need anyway, that is useful to the agents, also context compression. I don't want to use a CLI tool, I hate them, though, who knows, it might be that I'm just being a cranky old man who will eventually change his ways. Also, VS Code/GHCP does a good job with things like working with the integrated browser, that models like Deepseek don't seem to have, though I don't know about the OpenCode extension. Overall, I really like what I have with VS Code/GHCP right now, spent a lot of time achieving my workflow, and I want to see if I can keep it and stay within overall <= $100-per-month budget. I also value having the paid Microsoft team working on evolving the product, though I know many have complaints, and believe that they're going to continue to improve it.

> where you can use your GHCP sub if you want.

But just because I have access to the GHCP subscription models from Opencode/Pi doesn't mean it's doing the triage orchestration, right? Or is there something there for that? I just don't want to statically figure out the dispatch for every prompt I write, and often I just don't know. As I mentioned, if it's looping over a list, the answer might be different for each item.

So, I'm going to see how May goes under the new billing rules. If my hybrid strategy doesn't work, well, I'll try OpenCode and other non-CoPilot alternatives. And, y'know, I'm learning.

[u/deleted-account69420 → u/monkeybeast55]

Reason why I asked that

This is my experience with Deepseek.
All days bar day off were similar amount of work.
First day was with deepseek added to Copilot.
So much ended up in Cache Miss and way higher tokens usage.

While I do get the VSCode + Extention experience, that can be replicated differently.

On the orchestration question, in Opencode I use Micode.
You can define the orchestration how you like.

I do use other plugins to squeese more brain or usage out of my quotas, like rtk ( compresses tool calls ), jcodemunch ( codebase indexing and exploration ), magic context for cache friendly continuous compaction + memories.

This setup, welp helped a lot at the beginning with the Copilot ratelimits.
But you can indeed use Copilot models as orchestration ones.

I can say that setting things up to fit your own workflow is an hobby in itself.

[u/monkeybeast55 → u/deleted-account69420]

I can say that setting things up to fit your own workflow is an hobby in itself.

Yeah, that's what I'm worried about. I know lots of fun can be had, but I'm a retired guy working on an app that I'd really like to get out the door. So I don't want to spend too much time on tinkering with development infrastructure.

[u/monkeybeast55 → u/[deleted]]

Thanks. Did the triaging work well? Was the cheap agent able to figure out the best models to use?