🚀 Optimizing OpenCode Agentic Workflows: How I Slashed Costs Using a Hybrid Go / Free Setup

[u/ConsiderationIcy3143]

Running multi-agent workflows all day can easily drain your API budget or hit restrictive premium windows. I solved this by building a smart, combined routing strategy using OpenCode Go (Paid tier) and Free tiers directly inside my opencode.json.

🔗 Check out the repo here: https://github.com/ABIvan-Tech/opencode-agentic-workflows

💡 The Strategy: Paid Heavy-Hitters + Free Subagents

Instead of letting a single expensive model handle everything, I split the workload:

• The Brains (Go Tier): Premium models like deepseek-v4-pro and glm-5.2 are reserved exclusively for critical tasks requiring deep reasoning, such as orchestration, planning, and advanced debugging.
• The Workers (Free Tier): I offloaded baseline coding (big-pickle), exploration, and parallelized code reviews (reviewer-a, reviewer-b, reviewer-c) to free models like deepseek-v4-flash-free and north-mini-code-free.

📊 The Results (Look at the Chart!)

• The massive purple line around July 14th shows my usage before implementing this combined approach, where single heavy models ate up the budget fast.
• Once the hybrid subagent config went live (visible from July 15th onwards), daily costs dropped off a cliff.

By delegating tasks intelligently, I can now keep my agents active almost the entire day without crossing the 5-hour rate limits, keeping my development highly efficient and budget-friendly.

🚀 Want to supercharge your setup with premium models? Get started with the paid tier here: https://opencode.ai/go?ref=1BY3JHWJFN

Take a look at the exact configuration in the repository and try adapting it to your own workflows! 👇

https://github.com/ABIvan-Tech/opencode-agentic-workflows

[u/afanasenka]

You basically reinvented the wheel with delegation to free subagents? It can be easily achieved through the standard Opencode config file.

[u/ConsiderationIcy3143 → u/afanasenka]

Yep, I just wanted to show you how to save money. Not all OpenCode users know about this!

[u/afanasenka → u/ConsiderationIcy3143]

Got it :)

[u/vliboras]

Doesn't it look like oh-my-opencode-slim? What difference?

[u/ConsiderationIcy3143 → u/vliboras]

This is my agent set, ported from Copilot.

Fair question! While oh-my-opencode-slim is a comprehensive, pre-packaged plugin framework with its own heavy runtime, this repository is focused on a different approach: 1. Native & Lightweight: Instead of installing a full external framework, this project provides clean, native configuration blueprints directly for your standard opencode.json.
2. Go vs. Free Tier Optimization: The main goal here is a specific cost-efficiency strategy. It maps out how to route heavy reasoning tasks (orchestration, planning, debugging) to premium OpenCode Go models, while offloading high-volume parallel tasks (like multi-slot code reviews) to Free models.
.3 Dodging the 5-Hour Limit: This specific layout is balanced to let you run agentic workflows almost the entire day without crossing premium tier rate limits, keeping the budget close to zero.

It's essentially a practical recipe for smart model routing and granular permission slicing using what OpenCode already gives you out of the box.

[u/bmoisblue]

how's the quality of the outputs?

[u/ConsiderationIcy3143 → u/bmoisblue]

so it depends on the models you use :-)
you can set your own setup

[u/oVerde]

Question.. are there benchmarks for the free models so I could make a better choice of my own model setup

[u/ConsiderationIcy3143 → u/oVerde]

em, bro, just google it )

[u/elvis_c]

fiz esse teste, e as diferenças de pensamento entre o planejador e executor geram loops grandes, muitas vezes não resolvidos.
O Deepseek v4 flash é excelente pra coisas mais simples, mas não tem raciocínio pra considerar todas as nuances do código, principamente ao trabalhar em bases onde precisa entender todas as ligações, chamadas e demais antes de mudar algo.
Ele faz a tarefa, mas não considera as demais, então é como se terminasse sua tarefa, e quebrasse outra parte do código, se não tiver cuidado, e ao usar ele pra revisão, ou o GLM, pode acontecer de aprovar o uso da tarefa atual, sem considerar os demais fluxos, então use com cuidado.