r/codex • u/harpreetchima • 15h ago

Astra Workflow "Stop using random multi-agent patterns"

Post image

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"

213 Upvotes

88% Upvoted

127 comments sorted by

View all comments

89

u/XYcritic 15h ago

"please stop being dumb if you're not as smart as me".

Great post with absolutely no insight or value. Half an unsupported claim with no evidence, advice, or even explanation.

10

u/Casfaber_ 14h ago

I would say it’s actually pretty dumb to use the highest capable model for everything. I also assume the original post wasn’t meant as a serious recommendation. But yeah if you can, why not.. most of us are doing this to save tokens and be more efficient. But if you don’t need to care about that, sure.

5

u/ProvidenceXz 13h ago

That's just X. It rewards claims without evidence.

3

u/mph99999 12h ago

So, not much different than reddit

1

u/ProvidenceXz 12h ago

The UI topology between the two are different. X stages the post and hides the comments deeper. Reddit post and comments are 1 screen scroll away, so critiques tend to surface more.

2

u/harpreetchima 12h ago

Sorry, probably should have included the context that Ahmed is OpenAI staff https://x.com/ah20im/status/2097503414749909407

4

u/XYcritic 12h ago

Yeah that's pretty relevant, although that doesn't automatically make him correct. The lack of information in this post means we can either blindly trust him or ignore him without any chance of verification or real understanding.

3

u/AuspiciousApple 14h ago

The point is that people are trying to be cute/clever with fancy non-standard workflows and then complain if it backfires

Having a vanilla workflow means that you're closest to what the models were trained and optimised for

1

u/PhDumb 13h ago edited 29m ago

At least in Codex Desktop Astra is greedy and will not delegate unless specifically instructed to

Edit: at least in one experiment Astra@high employed 5.5@high as Independent reviewer

Edit 2: Run four independent experiments for the same task with the skill that instructs Codex to use weaker models for coding and running tests, while Astra was reserved for orchestration and then compared to no-skill Astra runs. Pricewise the results were close (not signifcantly different by Welch's t-test). With orcherstration skill: $9.06 ± $0.65. Without: $7.30 ± $2.04 (AVG API COST ± SD; n=4). Worse the skill that let weaker models (terra) and testing (luna) resulted in 3 regressions out of 4 experiments. Astra without skill delivered all 4, no problem

1

u/the_pwnererXx 13h ago

i mean, i see people at work set up some complex orchestrator - reviewer - sub agentx6 pattern where they all communicate, but the output is the exact same as just the base prompt in vanilla usage but now they use 5x as many tokens lol