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Comment by furyofantares

9 hours ago

I'd been on Codex for a while and with Codex 5.2 I:

1) No longer found the dumb zone

2) No longer feared compaction

Switching to Opus for stupid political reasons, I still have not had the dumb zone - but I'm back to disliking compaction events and so the smaller context window it has, has really hurt.

I hope they copy OpenAI's compaction magic soon, but I am also very excited to try the longer context window.

If you use OpenCode (open source Claude Code implementation), you can configure compaction yourself : https://opencode.ai/docs/en/config/#compaction

  • Not sure if it's a common knowledge but I've learned not that long ago that you can do "/compact your instructions here", if you just say what you are working on or what to keep explicitly it's much less painful.

    In general LLMs for some reason are really bad at designing prompts for themselves. I tested it heavily on some data where there was clear optimization function and ability to evaluate the results, and I easily beat opus every time with my chaotic full of typos prompts vs its methodological ones when it is writing instructions for itself or for other LLMs.

1m context in OpenAI and Gemini is just marketing. Opus is the only model to provide real usable bug context.

  • I'm directly conveying my actual experience to you. I have tasks that fill up Opus context very quickly (at the 200k context) and which took MUCH longer to fill up Codex since 5.2 (which I think had 400k context at the time).

    This is direct comparison. I spent months subscribed to both of their $200/mo plans. I would try both and Opus always filled up fast while Codex continued working great. It's also direct experience that Codex continues working great post-compaction since 5.2.

    I don't know about Gemini but you're just wrong about Codex. And I say this as someone who hates reporting these facts because I'd like people to stop giving OpenAI money.

  • Codex high reasoning has been a legitimately excellent tool for generating feedback on every plan Claude opus thinking has created for me.

This is true.

When I am using codex, compaction isn’t something I fear, it feels like you save your gaming progress and move on.

For Claude Code compaction feels disastrous, also much longer