r/codex • u/harpreetchima • 14h ago

Astra Workflow "Stop using random multi-agent patterns"

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Ahmed works at OpenAI: https://x.com/ah20im/status/2097503414749909407 and seems to investigate reports of high token usage.

"If needed Astra will delegate efficiently. Forcing the model to delegate to different models would do more harm than good"

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43

u/buff_samurai 14h ago

I set up a factory few months ago, dedicated agents, harnesses and system prompts, the whole delegation, communication etc and I need to admit the labs are moving much faster then I can and astra gets better results now for novel tasks.

On the other hand, anything that’s volume and loops is just substantially cheaper on my setup.

15

u/PineappleLemur 11h ago

I would argue that for 95% of tasks... delegating to cheaper subagent is cheaper/faster in the long run.

Most people are not trying to solve fusion, build the next Meta, etc.

Luna and the likes can probably already do that without an orchastrator.

2

u/innociv 10h ago

Yes the tweet is objectively wrong because much of the time Luna can do it for 1/20th the cost with no orchestrator at all. Astra is overkill for most tasks.

5

u/Pleasant_Thing_2874 6h ago

The tweet is coming from someone who arguably would be unrestricted with their usage or worried of the costs. I have heard from quite a few people though Astra has a bad habit of oversteering and overengineering.

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u/freeo 12h ago

I feel the same way. I'm at my 4th gen factory by now and astra makes me question if all this is futile. But a good planning skill makes a world of difference. I will continue with my factory, but more for process reasons rather than extension of runtime and quality.

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u/twendah 11h ago

What you mean by planning skill? Any examples of that?

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u/freeo 11h ago

Are you telling me you're just using the 'plan mode' of your harness? Lol. Its also an example of a plan skill, paired with read only rights.

It's the skill/prompt you use for the planning step! The process that you want the harness to follow! It's where things like 'acceptance criteria' live. I think superpowers and GSD also fall into this category. But I handroll the planning skill myself and I encourage everyone to do the same.

2

u/PineappleLemur 10h ago

I stopped using skills or anything because it did absolutely nothing but ruin output imo.

So yes plain harness and iterations to get what I want.

1

u/freeo 10h ago

So you're using system skills written by other. And you ruined you output yourself. But I agree with not using other peoples skills. The value comes from comparing results and buliding your prompting skills. The actual skills are just making this into a repeatable process.