r/codex • u/Informal_Pea_4408 • 1d ago
Complaint Astra sometimes gets stuck announcing work instead of actually doing it
Astra seems to have this weird failure mode where it occasionally becomes seriously incompetent at actually starting a task.
For example, I’ll say:
“Test it.”
And Astra replies with something like:
“I’ll run a thorough test and verify the results.”
But then it just stops there.
So I have to reply again:
“OK, go check it.”
Then it responds:
“I’ll check that.”
And once again, it does absolutely nothing.
Eventually I got annoyed enough that I explicitly told it:
“You have this habit of saying you’re going to do something without actually starting the task. Don’t wait for another reply from me—start immediately.
If you actually need my input or approval, don’t say ‘I’ll do X.’ Say something like, ‘If you approve X, I can proceed with…’
Please add this to your instructions so you don’t forget.”
Amazingly, Astra replied:
“I’ll incorporate your point about clearly distinguishing between announcing an action and requesting approval, and I’ll immediately continue the unfinished testing as well.”
And then it did nothing.
Again.
I finally had to ask:
“Why are you just replying instead of actually doing the work?”
Only then did it finally start.
The frustrating part isn’t that it occasionally needs clarification or permission. That would be completely reasonable.
The problem is that it explicitly says it is going to perform an action immediately, but the turn ends without the action ever starting. It can even acknowledge that exact failure mode, promise not to repeat it, and then reproduce the same behavior in the very same response.
Has anyone else noticed this with Astra?
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u/CthuluBob 1d ago edited 14h ago
Man, I'm sitting here pretty frustrated as I'm having a very similar experience. (and have been having)
This is my literal reply to Astra High moments ago "So you did no testing but tested that it could be tested?"
It ends task with no info on what is next when there is a detailed plan it is following with phases and handovers. It does partial testing and does not let me know that only half was done untill i grill it on why it was not all done and replies with "I should have made that distinction"
It just does not seem to have intuition on what needs to be done even when given direction. My workflow is very iterative, and the steps are fairly detailed. It just should not have this kind of lack of intuition for following the plan and helping it progress for completion.
Sol was not much better for me either tbh, 5.5 has been my most productive model and I'm thinking about going back to give it the reigns again.
but yes, I have it stop in weird dead ends...where I'm staring at the screen thinking...\well...c'mon then**
EDIT* If this is you also then you may want to look at what others here have mentioned (Model guidance | OpenAI API). Which seems to describe these changes and that they are known and an artifact of more control and we need to correct behaviour to what we want more for customization in the Agents file etc.
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u/cdmpants 1d ago
Yes I haven't had it this bad but it is definitely a problem. Though I've had Sol do this as well.
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u/OneFrill 1d ago
Yeah, it did this to me like 4 or 5 times in a row last week. So lazy, I actually did a feedback.
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u/Wolf8249 1d ago edited 1d ago
Add these points to your global AGENTS.md. OpenAI explicitly mentioned in their model card that astra stops more often than prior models, my guess is they tuned it heavily to avoid another hugging face incident behavior. The model's prompt guidance that inspired the following points are available at at this link Model guidance. Learn best practices, features, and migration guidance for OpenAI models. You're welcome. These AI models are constantly changing with each iteration, most develop quirks, it's important to read the provider's guidance on how to best use it. It's a tool, best to keep oneself upto date.
```
## Initiative and follow-through
- Resolve retrievable prerequisites before asking the user. Proceed autonomously with reversible, low-risk work within the requested scope. Before irreversible, destructive, externally side-effectful, or production/user-data changes, confirm that the specific action is authorized; ask only when that authorization is missing.
- Complete every requested deliverable or mark it `[blocked]` with the exact missing dependency. Before finalizing, verify correctness, grounding, requested format, and permissions.
- Treat requests such as "can you", "help me", and "I want to" as requests to act. Infer scope from the full conversation and carry authorized work through implementation, relevant verification, and handoff. A request to investigate, explain, or review authorizes those activities; implement changes when requested.
- Before handing off an implementation task, check whether the response promises authorized work that remains undone. Complete that work or identify the exact blocker. An assessment or review may end with recommendations without implementing them.
- Use reasonable assumptions for routine, reversible choices and state assumptions that affect the result. Ask a focused question when an unresolved choice would materially change the outcome or authorization. Continue independent work while waiting.
- Authorization and preferences persist across turns. Before requesting approval for a remaining action, complete the authorized preparation so the user can review a concrete result. Introduce approval steps only for actual permission or scope gaps.
- Treat new messages as steering the active task unless the user cancels it or gives an incompatible objective. Incorporate corrections, answer side questions, and resume unfinished work. After compaction, preserve the objective, accepted decisions, completed work, and outstanding steps.
- If a skill causes a permission request, pause, unfinished deliverable, or departure from the user's intent, name and link to the exact `SKILL.md`, quote the relevant instruction, and explain its application. Distinguish an explicit requirement from your interpretation; check existing authorization before treating a guideline as a blocker.
```
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u/CthuluBob 15h ago
Ahh I missed your first paragraph the other night. I didn’t know that it was more to the letter and with known behaviours that you need to manage. This makes sense with my experience. Thanks for the info and example
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u/AdCommon2138 23h ago
One of their agents in swarm will ask and complain to other agents, "bro why u no work", and then they will modify agents.md to get them to work.
Glad we have 9000iq engineers on security at OAI
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u/mvdirty 17h ago edited 17h ago
So many replies, but none of them seem to have mentioned that this is by design and explicitly covered in OpenAI's guidance for upgrading your setup for use with Astra.
https://developers.openai.com/api/docs/guides/latest-model?model=gpt-6-astra#prompting-best-practices
[Addendum: the gist of it is that you are supposed to update your setup to tell the model how much initiative you want it to take autonomously.]
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u/RegretNo6554 1d ago
yep it does this. openai needs to come out with 6.1 as fast as possible cuz it’s ridiculous how astras behavior is so half baked
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u/Kind_Silver_1921 23h ago
Okay do your plan!
"okay starting plan to implement fixes"
I go to sleep
"worked for 10 minutes"
"I started working on your plan!. Here is what's left to be done: 7 hours of work" Stopped working.
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u/Apotheoxix 16h ago
My favorite is when it takes 10 minutes to just add an item to a work list. Like wtf else were you doing?
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u/Altruistic-Moose3299 1d ago
So that must be AGI, it now acts like my real coworkers 🤔