Comment by wahnfrieden
11 hours ago
2.5x more expensive than Sol.
Can expect 2.5x more usage in Codex subscription.
Sol is already brutal (even after their recent fixes, it's just a token-hungry model: I go through a full 20x account per day, on Sol Med/High standard speed, with ~2 threads). I hope the efficiency gains are true, since their token efficiency claims for Sol were bullshit.
How is it I juggle 4-8 Codex Sol-5.6 Max agents every day and have never once run out, but you run out in one day? What are you actually doing?
How do you manage to run out of tokens so quickly? I probably run more threads every working day, usually on medium, and I'm still below the 5x limits.
Do you use the official harness? OpenAI's models are generally best in class for token efficiency. It seems to me like they push for that much more than their competitors.
I've long speculated this when I see these types of comments, because it's actually really difficult to hit usage caps with an efficient dev flow, even when running multiple threads for hours every day.
I think some combination of:
1) Using 1 thread for everything
2) Reviving old threads which are no longer in cache
3) Really broad prompts on badly vibecoded codebases, so model spends huge amount of time tracking down whatever you're trying to do.
4) Non-coding workflow which is more output than input heavy
5) (Less likely IMO) Intelligent use of many passive CI/cron-like scans. E.g. regular security, quality etc scans. Automated issue resolution/PR
Just a guess. I think 3 is likely the primary reason.
You can literally go all day every day with multiple threads with Sol on the Codex 100/month plan IME
That's my experience too. I've found OpenAI really quite generous with tokens. I sometimes wonder how some people manage to run out of them really. Do they just type prompts that much faster than me or use the highest reasoning mode for everything just because they can? Idk.
I generally agree with those reasons, although using a single thread may be less of an issue than it seems because of context compacting which should happen automatically when you're near the limit.
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Many threads.
I use new threads if relevant old one is uncached. (Often using a skill or doc for handoff instead of requiring full context gathering again.)
I get involved in architecture and specific implementation direction. The codebase is 8 years old and mostly handwritten.
Mostly coding. Some QA.
No cron/CI agents.
If you are telling the truth you might want to check your network for any weird connections to Chinese LLM transit stations.
How?? I'm using sol Extra High 24/7 and it eats up about 1% per hour reliably, so it lasts about 4 days for me.
These folks are probably using crazy plugins or crazy sub agent spams. They probably just run everything on max + fast mode which is ridiculous.
The guy said medium/high regular speed so that's why I'm very puzzled! Ultra + Fast will absolutely slurp up your whole usage quickly but I've never found it gives substantially better results so I stick to extra high.
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Sub-agents. I have 7 20x accounts and I burn them within 1-2 days if I go fully parallel. In some scenarios I use 50 sub-agents for a session which is literally hours of usage for a single 20x account. I'm at the point where I need to parallelize over multiple machines because I just don't have enough CPU and RAM.
The only subagents I use are Luna.
What are you doing with them you need so many? It sounds like a Gas Town situation, that you invented an exponential token burning machine.
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what are you doing with that many agents/tokens? very curious
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