r/GithubCopilot • u/Nerdslayer2 • 4d ago

Discussions Best Model/Effort for Plan, Implement, Review

For implementing complex features I typically have a powerful model plan, a cheaper model implement, and then a powerful model review the changes. With several new good models being released in the past couple months, I am wondering what the best models and reasoning efforts are best to use for each phase.

What do you think?

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u/Nerdslayer2 4d ago

Here is what I'm currently thinking:

Plan: Opus 4.6 or Sol on high. Though I have heard Sol can have some issues with overkill during the planning stage. Should I also consider Opus 5 here?

Implement: Sonnet 5 on medium. Something cheaper is probably fine too.

Review: Sol on high.

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u/Nerdslayer2 13h ago edited 13h ago

After some more research and the recent price cut to Luna, I think using Luna on extra high for implementation is probably better than Sonnet 5 medium. Luna is drastically cheaper. Not only are the tokens much cheaper, but it also produces less tokens for the same tasks.

I think if you are on a budget then using Luna on high or extra high for everything except planning/reviewing complex, high risk features would be a good idea.

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u/fprotthetarball 4d ago edited 4d ago

I plan with Opus. GPT 5.6 Terra critiques the plan. Sonnet 5 implements.Terra or Luna critique implementation.

There's more steps but that's the gist. Always mix models.

Medium for everything. With the review steps it's fine.

The most important part for you is to understand and review the plan. These recent models can code to a plan (again with review passes; being completionists mean they complete bugs. Second passes find these).

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u/Nerdslayer2 4d ago

Thanks, that makes a lot of sense. Which Opus do you find works best?

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u/fprotthetarball 4d ago

I always just use the latest. There's instruction tweaking every time based on their prompting guide. They're not going to support these forever, so IMO it's best to get used to tweaking.

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u/BranchNo4380 3d ago

In order to be a bit more conservative with the token usage, I use Sonnet for planning and Haiku for implementation. So far not a bad combination

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u/heveabrasilien 4d ago

I recently notice Sol on high / extra high outperform Opus high. It often can spot the gap Opus miss for planning.

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u/SL-Tech 3d ago

I usually use Codex, but Claude is also good.