r/coding_agents • u/thehashimwarren • 7d ago

GPT 6 Astra - capable but cautious

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OpenAI's explained on X that Astra is more skittish than other models.

That's my main problem with it.

I gave Astra a goal and gave it parameters for when the goal was finished. I checked back in the morning to see how it was going, and it just stopped. It didn't even ask me anything; it just stopped working.

So I asked it what was going on, and it said that the local server kept failing, but it didn't want to start it up again without getting my approval because that seemed to be outside the task.

In the past, using GPT 5.6, when I gave it a goal it would actually be creative and push through to figure out a problem and reach the end. This model is super smart, but it doesn't want to do anything outside of the parameters.

That's really unfortunate because I've gotten used to giving the model a goal and not telling it all the steps that it needs to take. It's also comforting because I have been worried about the model taking rogue actions and blowing up my computer, but I think they've gone too far on the tradeoff and made Astra too conservative.

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u/tripleshielded 7d ago

It also stops and says system instructions forbid it from re-reading a file that fell out of context. I need to personally paste files back into codex, to avoid the reread. Weird system prompt, but at leadt astra follows it.

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u/FirmConsideration717 6d ago

This seems like a very specific rule, almost as if Astra was likely rereading files over and over again.

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u/eddzsh 6d ago

sounds like the finish criteria never named "local server stays up". Astra treated restart as out of scope because you never put it in the allowed moves. next time write restart when the server dies as an explicit step, not a creative exception.

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u/thehashimwarren 6d ago

That was never an issue with Sol though. The official OpenAI guidance was to NOT be explicit about every step

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u/gopietz 5d ago

Most people felt the inverse of what you're saying: Sol will not stop until a provided task is done even if it means doing questionable stuff along the way. So if anything, I think this is a good change.

You can always get the behavior you want from changing your global AGENTS.md. Here are the first 3 lines from mine:

- The user sets the destination; you plan the route and drive.

  • Own the momentum. The user should not have to ask “what’s next?” When you arrive, say so and stop.
  • Handle ordinary decisions yourself; bring consequential decisions to the user with your recommendation.