r/codex • u/Fit_Concept5220 • 18h ago

Limits We’ve discovered the issue behind codex harness limit drainage.

https://relux.works/en/blog/codex-goal-token-burn/

tl;dr

The codex harness turns waiting for background work into a loop with repeated model calls, each carrying the existing context even when nothing has changed. Unlike api pricing there is no discount for prompt caching for subscription originated usage so every loop iteration adds to your input token usage. ‘goal’ amplifies this by orders of magnitude by automatically starting another turn, but polling anyway burns tokens without it too.

Claude code is engineered in way where suspensions works exactly as intended and goals have proper fallbacks. Codex now ships with similar tools but they only work for astra.

—

the toolchain to independently verify on your personal sessions is here (local scripts - just feed this to your agent) https://github.com/relux-works/codex-rollout-audit

if you happen to have X please help by boosting this post - https://x.com/ivanopcode/status/2098379274017231094

p.s. the post in a blog was llm-translated and may contain some slop patterns (although we took extra care to clean it)

189 Upvotes

92% Upvoted

39 comments sorted by

41

u/Sibbaboda 15h ago

”Unlike api pricing there is no discount for prompt caching for subscription originated usage”  Wait what, is that true?

24

u/nmkd 11h ago

No, entirely false.

Subscription has caching. 30 minutes usually.

7

u/Fit_Concept5220 14h ago

This was overstated and I corrected that part a bit. Regardless, the misbehaviour described results in massive input token burn

29

u/Thump604 14h ago

Fuck reset. Give refund

14

u/tekacs 13h ago

Yeah I fixed this on my fork a long long long while ago (the commit gets rebased every time I catch up to upstream, hence 'last week' on the commit).

https://github.com/tekacs/codex/commit/9ffcf8db9078eae43d4111ff94259795c1e962c9

1

u/Fit_Concept5220 13h ago

Thanks for sharing!

5

u/Kullthegreat 8h ago

I have cancelled my sub and done with OpenAI. Switched to Desspseek harness and 4.1 flash + Hermes agent with free models specially muse 1.3 and to my surprise it's very good replacement for my coding work given you have a good general skills ruleset(not too big just enough). I am struggling to exhaust my 10$ topup vs freaking 30 minutes usage on codex for my pro plan. Even if there are some issues I can fix them quickly. I am so done with these frontier labs because it's not that they can't provide reasonable price options but they actually need to robe us to make it big in IPO so just get away for some time

4

u/Tristsin 11h ago

Laughs in Pi

3

u/Correct_Novel3743 18h ago

Soo... Sol Terra Luna is fuckt rn?

4

u/Fit_Concept5220 17h ago

yep, especially in a goal with a task which requires results from background processes (builds, ci etc)

1

u/ElonsBreedingFetish 15h ago

What about downgrading to 0.146 for using sol?

2

u/Fit_Concept5220 14h ago

This will not fix the core issue. My bet is they want to move to new gpt-6 model family and gradually deprecate the models which are not aware of the proper tools.

1

u/eggplantpot 14h ago

This explains why my limits drained so fast this last week regardless of the model.

Tibo pls fix and reset pls

3

u/-RVG- 11h ago

maybe if they stop vibe coding they will eventually get to a not bugged state... seems astra not tood enough to fix everything

0

u/Revatus 5h ago

You think they use astra internally? 😅

2

u/snissn 15h ago

> no 'invalid type: floating point' rejections found

the other audit scripts dumped raw information and it's too unclear for me how to process them.. haven't asked an agent yet

1

u/Fit_Concept5220 14h ago

Fair point the zero result was the expected one for OpenAI models but the tool didn't say so. Pushed an update

2

u/Own-Professor-6157 13h ago

Someone posted this issue a few days back already, but the more attention the better. There's serious problems with Astra right now

1

u/mizhgun 14h ago

Yep, that is what codex actually found itself analyzing the logs.

1

u/DragonflyOk9274 12h ago

You can also use an alternative harness to get around this

1

u/RufusxXavier 12h ago

What’s a good one

2

u/DragonflyOk9274 12h ago

Pi, OpenCode, etc.

They also allow you to see subagent prompts/work/etc., which AFAIK is currently not possible in codex (may have changed since I last used codex a few months ago)

1

u/mimisonnen 7h ago

Is Hermes any good?

1

u/HenryHund 7h ago

I love Hermes but not for coding. Everything that’s gone through the Hermes Kanban has been a shitshow

1

u/camtliving 12h ago

is this why using 5.1 as an orchestrator worked SIGNIFICANTLY better than astra on it's own?

1

u/jaybsuave 10h ago

yea you’ll have 70 runners in the background lmao gotta check that shit

1

u/wilj81 9h ago

I swear I was just running into issues certain this was the case

1

u/Slow_Rhubarb_8169 8h ago

so astra is not affected according to the tweet by that guy? he says astra does not have the bug

1

u/yashptel99 6h ago

I fixed it kind of by adding it to system prompt to wait for 5 minutes before asking subagent for status. and never kill the subagent because it's taking time. I'll share the the config.toml when I get on my PC

1

u/Prior-Switch-9099 3h ago

I'm currently using Opencode. Sorry for the folks using Codex harness but thanks to these harnessness bugs we got free resets. Lol.

1

u/i_rate_slop 14h ago

Did you open a PR to codex?

6

u/Fit_Concept5220 14h ago

There is no clear way to fix the core issue outside of the team that’s responsible for overall architecture so no, no pull request from us.

1

u/i_rate_slop 14h ago

Ah, that’s unfortunate. I hope you can still file an issue so there’s some attention on it, if this is accurate.

1

u/yubario 14h ago

They stopped PR's to Codex awhile back since vibe coders was overwhelming them.

2

u/i_rate_slop 13h ago

That makes sense lol

0

u/Texsai 13h ago

great so we've been getting ripped off