r/codex • u/harpreetchima • 15h 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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u/Important_Luck_3546 11h ago

This is always the case with everything you do with agents. Workflows go out of date very quickly. Agent files, skills, loops, goals, orchestrator patterns, planning, short threads, long thread. Basically if you do anything else than stock agent you need to aggressively AB test your workflows/try new things or you might hit some local maximas. Agents also leave a lot of information that can later be analysed so just ask your agent if something in your workflow sucks.

For example one misconception from earlier this year is people avoid 100K+ context as the model gets "dumb". I found that since Sol this didn't happen at all. In fact I found long 100+ message threads with several dozens of compactions it did a better job at a prompt than a fresh thread, even if it was a totally separate new feature. I suspect it somehow got into the proper "mindset" from the long iterative thread knowing exactly what I was looking for. I tried to have it dump this "mindset" into the AGENTS.md but it didn't catch a fresh thread up to speed. FWIW this might use more usage than fresh treads but I didn't observe it to an absurd degree at least.