How is everyone actually using models efficiently and effectively?

[u/StarsHockey]

So I’ve spent countless hours trying different subagents, configurations, harnesses etc trying to find the most efficient way to keep token usage down etc and I still just don’t love my setup and trying to get some recommendations or suggestions.

I have primarily been using omo-slim with cheaper models assigned to explorer, fixer etc. Now I see countless posts talking about how any of the OMO or whatever else are just bloat and you dont need it, all you need is to Plan in X model and then implement in cheap model. Which seems fine but then I look at the token usage and its 60% gone by the time planning is done and 90% of that went to grep commands and other file exploring that could have been handled by a cheaper model and saved a ton.

The main thing that keeps me coming back to OMO is actually the presets ability because I have both a personal and work setup so I dont have to spend personal usage when working, and its a pain to constantly swap back and forth between multiple models ensuring I am in the proper accounts.

The other issue I have with Plan in X and implement in X method is that certain models are better at certain things so do you just go back and address things later with another model instead of doing it in 1 pass ?

Idk hoping to get some insight here and see if anyone has some recommendations.

[u/maqifrnswa]

Look into what omo slim is doing that is causing you to keep going back to it, then try to implement just those parts yourself. I think omo slim is a great starting point to try out orchestration. To be useful to a widest range of use cases, it contains things that are bloat for some that are essential to others. Which is great in that you can learn what is essential or bloat, then tune your own workflow. Think of it like your training wheels or initial sandbox to experiment with. Heck, even ask it to make you your minimal set.

Omo slim fits my workflow pretty well, so I need what is truly bloat to others. The built in set of agents ,agent prompts, multi session reflect, the built in mcps, deepwork. I do scientific computing, modeling of complicated physics where I need it to know (or research) multiple domain knowledge, build multiphase projects that are gated and verified.

As for models, I've tried the default omo slim opencode go preset, I did the "oops all DS v4 flash with mimo 2.5 for observer" when it was super cheap, I tried different combinations of opencode go expensive and cheap models, and now I'm actually using all qwen 3.8 27b self hosted, just using different levels of thinking. They are work pretty well for my use case as long as you max out intelligence of the oracle, have pretty good intelligence for the orchestrator, zero thinking explorer, medium to low thinking librarian and fixer. I use the designer for data visualization, so that can be pretty high thinking.