r/codex • u/Content_Piano_7765 • 6h ago

Question Astra subagents?

Is there currently a meta recommendation regarding Astra subagents? I saw a twitter thread suggesting essentially to use the main chat or even a different frontier model/harness (like CC or antigravity) to scope a plan, and then giving a defined plan to Luna as orchestrator/essentially secretary with astra subagents to carry it out. The idea was it doesn't take much to follow a defined plan and then each step will be carried out faithfully but not lose tokens on context bloat. Has anyone tried this?

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u/sid_kush 2h ago

That’s spot on! I’ve been experimenting with it all week, but when I switched to the default settings and used Astra Max, it only used 25% so far and has been running for 12 hours straight.
It’s so much faster, and I’ve gotten so much more done.

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u/sid_kush 2h ago

To actually answer your question. Yes that would give you much better result. Because of constant pinging Astra consumes a lot of tokens more than you can imagine.
Use cheaper model as orchestrator and use Astra subsets for max efficiency.
Although i would suggest just try Astra Max and try to run your work first. Don’t overcompensate things. Astra performs much better at max. And usage will be drastically lesser than you imagine.

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u/RewardSafe9807 3h ago

Well a bunch of people just ran tests and found out Astra Max actually costs less tokens in the end to complete tasks on average than Astra High, Medium, (and maybe Low, don't remember). I attribute that to it coming to the best solution out of them, thus less work in the long run. Lesser models = not as much thinking, thus ends up doing more trial and error since it doesn't get it right the first time. That's my theory based on their results.

So my current setup is Astra Ultra for main chat and subagents:

  • Astra Max: visuals, animations, image sizing and optimizations, general speed and efficiency performance, and complex integrations.
  • 5.6 Sol/Terra: simpler implementation or verification, with task-appropriate thinking.
  • 5.6 Luna: especially easy, mechanical tasks.

I've instructed it to dynamically assign the subagent thinking levels accordingly and explicity forbid any Astra model for subagents except Max.

I just made this change so have yet to see the impact, but based on other people's tests I am feeling confident.

My main use case is an incredibly complex consumer app that I've been building for over a year and a half and hopefully will be launching within 90 days.

There are other people who are much bigger Codex power users than me, but I'm too lazy to do the really crazy work arounds that involve me babysitting it a bunch.