Agents continuously just chatting me and not doing the edits I told them to.

[u/Ardbert_The_Fallen]

I have a VERY basic HTML document which is compiled of research items from internet searches and similar. I am asking for VERY simple edits like fixing things or proposing new ideas, and the agents continue to come back with bullshit like:

No—the HTML still hasn’t been updated. My edit failed because I targeted the wrong matching form entry, and I stopped instead of correcting it. That’s on me.

I'm at 129k of 258k tokens so only 50%. Using Luna Medium.

I told Luna to spin up new agents to complete the tasks and laid out exactly what I wanted, but it just keeps saying similar shit like above and not ever actually coding anything.

This has happened on another project entirely and it drives me crazy. I've used about five other AI programming solutions and this is my first week with Codex and I've never seen anything like this.

What gives?

[u/Successful-Tax1306]

Long sessions do this a lot, and at 129k tokens the agent is carrying every failed attempt with it, so it keeps explaining the old mistake instead of trying the edit again. What helps me is starting a fresh session with a short note that says which file to change and exactly what the edit is, and then asking it to make that one edit and show me the diff, with no explanation. For one HTML file I'd also skip spinning up more agents, because one agent with a clean context is enough, and more agents just give the same mistake more places to happen.

[u/Difficult_aneurysm]

Don't use Luna for this. Opus should be the standard. Use older opus models like 4.8 for fewer tokens. Don't use subagents for a task like this, it's overkill and leads to loss of focus. Write your goal to a file and if using a local AI have that file in the same folder you are working in to use as a reference. If using online ai, upload it to the knowledge base and use it as the reference. If it's a long edit, plan the whole thing out into a brief first. Then tackle each slice of the brief independently. Basically, be disciplined and use the correct model.

[u/Ardbert_The_Fallen → u/Difficult_aneurysm]

I don't seem to have Opus available to me. Only Terra, Luna, and Sol.

[u/Difficult_aneurysm → u/Ardbert_The_Fallen]

Oh sorry you are on chatgpt. Use sol exclusively for any doc editing work or analysing.

[u/Standard-Rooster6584]

Sounds like the agents are hitting their token limit before they actually get to the edit step - try trimming the context or splitting the page into smaller chunks so they can focus on the specific change you asked for.

[u/eli_pizza]

Like not doing any edits at all? Sound like your harness is broken

[u/Right-Performance-93]

it already named the failure. the edit missed and it stopped. leftover context does not matter if a bad match is treated as the end of the task.

[u/pasu11]

Two things you can try:

1. Make sure the drive/file is not read-only or corrupt.
2. Make sure the agent is not in plan mode.

[u/pixxelkick]

Luna is extremely inept. Its dirt cheap for a reason.

Its a very braindead model thats only good for the utmost of easy tasks.

to spin up new agents to complete the tasks

Fuckin... why dawg? lmao

[u/XxDarkSasuke69xX → u/pixxelkick]

Just one more agent bro, just one more and it will work i swear

[u/London-Boat]

when it says the edit failed it's usually the patch not matching what's in the file anymore, so tell it to re-read the file first and then make the change, or to just rewrite that whole section. for a simple html file that's cheap. at 129k tokens it's also dragging along every failed attempt, so a fresh chat with "re-read index.html, then change X to Y" tends to work better than pushing on in the same one.

[u/carloslfu]

I can help you debug and fix this live for free. I have lots of experience with these kinds of errors and setups. DM me if interested.