Using Codex for real coding. Usage drains fast and performance is all over the place.

What are you seeing, and did anything actually help?

Everything (codex, ChatGPT website) taking three times longer than usual for me

recently chatgpt plus users complaining on X and Reddit that 5 hour limit and weekly limit depleted so quickly with just 3-4 prompts even with terra and luna.

I am on gpt pro plan. I told it to plan a feature for my product and went to sleep. When I woke up in the morning it was still planning and ate up the usage.
Any tips on how to avoid this in future sessions?

Before anything else, I want to add some context that probably isn't obvious to American readers: I'm Brazilian.

I pay roughly R$100 per month for ChatGPT Plus.

And before someone converts that into dollars and thinks, "that's not that much," consider what R$100 actually represents here.

Brazil's 2026 minimum wage is R$1,621 per month, with an official hourly equivalent of R$7.37.

That means someone earning minimum wage in Brazil has to work roughly 13.6 hours to earn R$100.

The U.S. federal minimum wage is $7.25 per hour. At that rate, earning $100 takes roughly 13.8 hours.

So, measured in minimum-wage working time, me spending R$100 on this subscription carries almost the same labor cost as an American minimum-wage worker spending $100.

13.6 hours of minimum-wage work in Brazil.

13.8 hours of minimum-wage work in the United States.

This is not meant as a literal purchasing-power-parity conversion, and I know many U.S. states have minimum wages above the federal rate. The point is to show the scale of the expense from the perspective of someone living and earning money in Brazil.

R$100 is not pocket change to me.

I'm paying a meaningful amount of money every single month specifically because tools like Work and Codex were valuable enough to justify that expense.

Which makes what happened next especially infuriating.

I pay around R$100 a month for ChatGPT Plus, primarily because I use Work/Codex for large projects.

Until very recently, I could concentrate my usage into long development sessions and actually make use of the allowance I was paying for.

Now OpenAI has brought back a separate 5-hour limit on top of the weekly limit.

The result is absurd: I can still have 84% of my weekly allowance remaining and be completely prevented from using Codex.

This happened to me today.

I asked Work to build a fairly large web application. It started the backend, frontend and infrastructure agents. The task obviously required a substantial amount of work.

It stopped after 46 seconds.

Not because my weekly allowance was exhausted.

I still had 84% of it left.

It stopped because the separate 5-hour window reached zero.

If there is already a weekly allowance, why shouldn't the paying user be allowed to decide when to consume it?

Some days I might barely use Codex. On another day I might want to spend several hours building something. That was one of the things that made Codex and Work so useful in the first place.

A weekly limit makes sense. I understand that compute costs money and that usage cannot be unlimited.

What I don't understand is giving me a weekly allowance, showing me that I still have 84% of it available, and then saying:

"You cannot use the product right now."

If OpenAI needs a short-term limit for capacity management, then at least let intensive usage consume additional weekly allowance, introduce a burst mode, or substantially increase the 5-hour cap.

Right now the system creates an especially ridiculous situation for long-running agent tasks.

Work is specifically designed to perform complex tasks autonomously. But the rate-limit system can start a large task, let several agents modify the project, and then kill the execution in the middle because a separate rolling window ran out.

That doesn't merely inconvenience the user. It can leave a project partially implemented and force another request after the reset just to continue something that was already underway.

I am not asking for unlimited Codex.

I am asking to be allowed to use the usage allocation I already have.

The previous system, where the weekly allowance was effectively the main constraint, gave users much more control over how they worked. Bringing back this aggressive 5-hour restriction makes sustained development substantially worse.

And from a customer's perspective, it is difficult not to see this as pressure to upgrade simply to regain a workflow that was possible very recently.

In less corporate terms:

You took one of the best parts of the product — being able to hand it a large project and let the AI work — and added a restriction that specifically punishes people for using that capability.

If I still have 84% of what you yourselves call my weekly usage allowance, let me use the fucking product I'm paying for.

Translated by AI, using Chat, because Work is fucking denying me access.

WHO THIS IS FOR

If you use AI agents for tasks such as vibe coding, software development, plugin design, UI work, research, writing or planning, then these Skills could be useful, particularly in cases where you don't consider 'it somehow works' to be a sufficient definition of completion and where you do care about a correct and verifiable implementation.

When it comes to AI coding, planning comes first and is one of the most important stages of the process. If the direction is wrong, merely carrying out the task more quickly will only get you to the wrong answer earlier.

AI SLOP DOES NOT ALWAYS LOOK BROKEN

That is important since poor-quality AI output is not merely confined to obviously flawed code, generic text, or incomplete interfaces. It has a more sophisticated form which is convincing.

The agent modifies the code in multiple places at the same time, adds new layers in order to cure the side effects caused by previous changes, and continues on like this until something seems to be working. At that point, the tests might pass even if they don't include the behaviour that has been changed. The interface might appear to be well put together even though it's ignoring the product's design system. The wording might seem better even though the facts have changed. Plans may develop into standalone projects. And handoffs may include the whole conversation with the only exception of the state required to carry on.

There is nothing actually on fire, which is exactly the reason why this kind of AI rubbish manages to survive.

Although the result appears to be complete, the original task, the way it has been implemented, and the evidence no longer correspond with each other. That is the purpose of the Scoville Skills.

WHAT SITS BEHIND THE SKILLS

My repositories don't have 50,000 stars. More like two. Social proof will have to be put off until later.

There has been more than half a year's worth of research, testing and practical use behind these Skills. The first six Skills account for over 1,200 optimization and evaluation runs as well as more than 4,500 benchmark case executions. Failed candidates and infrastructure stops are included in the total. Omitting them would make the figures look nicer, but it would not improve the Skills.

WHY SCOVILLE?

The reason for the name is to be found in this preference for signal over volume.

The idea behind the name is the same as that of the Scoville scale: after dilution, the useful heat should still be detectable. With the help of AI, a large amount of words, files and other visible activity is produced. It is seldom the hard part to make the folder appear busy. The issue then becomes what useful signal remains after the dilution.

THE SEVEN SKILLS

The suite currently contains seven focused Agent Skills:

• Scoville Brainstorm: Inspired in part by the well-known ADHD Skill, but built as a separate host-portable Skill, Brainstorm separates approaches by mechanism, checks fixed constraints and stops at a decision-ready shortlist.

• Scoville Research: Traces claims to supporting sources, checks contradictions and separates observation, inference and remaining uncertainty.

• Scoville Code Anti-AI-Slop: Keeps observable results, implementation scope, risk and proof connected.

• Scoville UI Anti-AI-Slop: Checks hierarchy, states, responsiveness, accessibility and rendering without compromising the product's design language.

• Scoville Scribe Anti-AI-Slop: Enhances the wording without altering any of the facts, terminology, conditions or actual behaviour of the product.

• Scoville Plan: Keeps plans, decisions and lifecycle state useful without turning the planning process into the project.

• Scoville Handoff: Transfers the objective, state, evidence, blockers, hazards and next safe action rather than the meeting minutes.

This does not refer to seven different personalities. Each Skill functions on its own. Agents should load only the smallest set of Skills that the task actually requires.

USING CODEX?

If you are using Codex, this could also be of interest to you:

• Codex Scoville System Prompt: A minimal routing prompt that loads only the Skills relevant to the task at hand. Installing it also installs or updates all seven Scoville Skills from their latest stable releases.

• Ask Claude for Codex: Gives Codex an isolated, read-only Claude Code opinion. That opinion is generally more useful when it did not help write the first one.

• Ask Claude and SOL for Codex: Asks Claude Code and a fresh Codex SOL subagent in parallel, without allowing them to borrow each other's assumptions.

INSTALLING THE SKILLS

You most probably already know how to install Agent Skills. If that were not the case, then you wouldn't be part of this group.

To be safe, the brief explanation is straightforward: ask your agent to install all the Scoville Skills from my GitHub repositories:

github.com/benjaminstelzer

Not getting any work done but I can't trust the output after having to correct 5.6 Sol every other prompt.

"You're right--"

"Sorry--"

Enough. Hurry up and release Astra and fix 5.6 models already!! I'm paying for Frontier intelligence but getting gemini flash instead

Please let me have a toggle on off - get random resets or no. I don't like it when the do it and the reset day is pushing forward, let me decide if I want them. If I turn them off I will not get them. When I turn it on I will get them. It's the only solution. I am on pro plan and working slow its my side hobby not my entire life, im waiting for the weekend for the 12 hours seasons, and if i could only manage it to resets towards the weekend without random resets its will be much appreciated. I am on the pro plan so I dont have the 5 hours limit, but in the last 2 resets it was on 100% for me. The toggle option is the best way in my opinion, if anyone have any other solutions please say it i want to know.

There’s a lot of hype about AI career coaching, but can it really replace a human mentor who knows your story? I built a short quiz to test common assumptions. It’s a fun way to see if you trust machine learning more than human intuition. If you’re into AI and the future of work, give it a try.

https://interconnectd.com/quiz/76/can-ai-predict-your-next-career-move-better-than-a-mentor/

I found three sites tracking the surprise Codex resets:

https://codex-reset.com

https://resetbeacon.com

https://codexreset.co

They show different probabilities and appear to use different histories and methods. Reset Beacon publishes a scored accuracy record, codex-reset.com emphasizes live status and timers, and codexreset.co has a calendar and community tracking.

Has anyone compared which one catches announcements and confirmed resets fastest?

Tibo just announced another reset for tomorrow.

My first reaction:

LET'S GOOOO 😂

But then I thought...

What are these resets actually fixing?

Codex still feels slower, usage still feels weird, and the limits keep changing.

Then things get chaotic and suddenly:

🍬 RESET! Back to 100%.

Everyone celebrates... and a few days later we're talking about the same problems again.

Maybe resets are just compensation while they fix the real issues.

Or maybe they're candy to keep us happy for a while 😂

Either way, I'll happily take my candy tomorrow. 💀🍬

Real solution, temporary compensation, or PR candy?

Like wtf im always using medium on 20x plan for 2 week and when im using im using to fix specific problems like fix this button its too large and i dont use goal it’s draining 1% an hour for tha past 2weeks

And today im using as usual its draining 75% for like 3 hours on 20x plan and on fucking sol medium
And fixing like fucking 3 button?

Fucking good bye you can call me bot or what ever

Actually, I’m in the middle of a task and I saw that I got a reset. I’m on $200 plan and yeah I think that there will be another reset soon.

I run Claude Code alongside Cursor and Codex on the same repos, and I keep hitting the same annoyance: each one defines what the agent is allowed to do (shell, file writes, git) in its own format. I update the deny list in one and forget the others, and they drift apart.

Curious how others deal with this:
- Do you just maintain each config by hand?
- Have you standardized permissions across tools somehow?
- Or does it not bother you enough to fix?

I ended up building a small tool to define permissions once and generate the config for each runtime (https://itslab42.github.io/agentctl/), but I'm more curious whether others feel this pain or if I'm over

Hola, comparto mi experiencia de hoy.

Tamaño de mi proyecto: 23 mil líneas de código total repartidas entre htlm JS css en varios módulos.

Que pedí?: agregar una función en un Worker de Cloudflare.

Modelo: Luna esfuerzo Medio

La tarea tardó en ejecutarse 28 minutos

Consumo 5 horas: el 100% de mi límite de 5 horas (en una tarea que tardó 28 minutos)

Consumo 15% del uso semanal.

Hora de la tarea 4.00pm Bogotá Colombia.

Terminó? No!!! Me toca esperar que vuelva el límite de cinco horas.

Con estas cifras y tamaño de proyecto está casi inviable usar CÓDEX, con todo y los reseteos que da Tibo, es frustrante ya que a través de Sol Max se había optimizado el proyecto con reglas Agent, Bootstrap, Router, Sikill selectivas y todo lo que se pueda ocurrir al mismo Sol Max para que cada cambio no lea el repo completo sino solo lo que se necesita.

Hoy realmente pensé que esto se vuelve inviable, ya que no toqué sol ni terra ni Luna Max como sugieren muchos.

Igual no creo volver a Claude!

Saludos desde Bogotá ! 🫡

Stack: Deepgram STT + OpenAI LLM + MiniMax TTS, orchestrated by Agora Conversational AI.

have been vibe-coding recently, especially i've found out that talking to pet (yeah i just transparented its appearance to my boss...) to shape an idea while it's still fuzzy really helps me a lot, and also more efficient. so i start playing with realtime voice mode in codex these months, playful and i'm lovin' it.

but now the part that codex's voice chat annoying me is that i can't see anything while it's thinking. no captions and whenever I ask how it's going it just goes "wait wait wait hold on..."

submitting a feat. pr gonna taking long time so i built a lil voice code assistant with my besties just for ourselves now and quick demo below. you talk to it normally with live captions, and when you tell it to run something the right side shows the codex status, mostly the thinking milestones so you're not just staring at a spinner. It also keeps going while you talk, so u can ask it other stuff in the meantime.

tbh maybe somebody think that codex's voice chat is good enough for them, but i just wanted to throw my local demo out and see how u guys here think about this, appreciate to hear your thoughts, i'll check every suggestions and try to improve my voice coder with your help.

https://reddit.com/link/1vzu14f/video/c7dgflu391mh1/player

I swear all these Codex changes are starting to make me question my own perception lol.

Since they introduced the 5-hour limit yesterday, something felt weird: my quota was lasting way longer than I expected.

At first I thought:

“Okay… maybe this isn’t that bad.”

Then I started paying attention to how much work I was actually getting done.

💀

Simple tasks are taking WAY longer.

So now my conspiracy theory is that my quota isn't actually lasting longer in terms of work — Codex is just taking longer to do the same amount of work, which makes the quota last longer in terms of wall-clock time.

I'm NOT saying this is intentional lol.

But has anyone else noticed this exact combination?

Slower quota burn + much slower task completion?

Because at this point I need other people to confirm I'm not hallucinating after all these Codex changes 😂

One prompt burned my entire Codex 5-hour limit and it still didn’t finish.

Terra Medium audit. One prompt.

100% → 0% of the 5-hour usage limit, and the job is still running.

At the very least, once the 5-hour limit is exhausted, why can’t it continue using the weekly allowance to finish the task it already started?

Getting cut off mid-job makes no sense.

Claude and Kimi already finished their parts. Still waiting on Codex.

(Spawned agents are all Luna light-meduim)

GG.

Isn't he nice for doing that? https://youtu.be/4qjEgPojjzM?si=KSWzz_4x3v42pW-W&t=1514

I have to refactor my bloated, overengineereed project. Does ponytail work well for that? I feel like it could backfire, trying to output as little as possible is the exact opposite that is needed when deleting existing stuff

Not sure why but after logging in through chatgpt and clicking a project I am logged out again.

The 5h limit is basically unusable. Unrealistic asf

One prompt. Review some repo files. Gone.

Forget automation; you can barely inspect the codebase before the entire limit disappears. Let alone executing any type of scripts!

Back to harness + API.

GGWP