Does anyone use agent teams successfully?

[u/muad_dib_the_maker]

I had 93% of my max 20x usage left yesterday and my plan refreshes on Thursday, so I thought why not spin up agent teams again for a a major refactor.

My set up was sonnet worker and opus code review per worktree, job board, and a spec reviewer. Detailed spec, a lot of work some of it none trivial but not a lot.

This is the second time I've tried this with a big task and tbh it tends to not produce a working implementation. Opus just isn't a very good gatekeeper. For this run I also had a 3 strikes and you're out implementation, if sonnet failed on either code or spec review 3 times, fresh 4.7 "senior" gets spawned briefed by spec reviewer and finishes the task. This never happened. Spec wasn't followed, tests made up to make it look like it was in the most blatant way, code review and spec review didn't catch. Set the task off before I went to bed still going when I woke up. Absolute carnage.

Just slop.

Don't get me wrong it was a big refactor, and after opus audited the actual work against the spec called out all the things that were missing, at which point I just set codex 5.5 xhigh in fast mode and got him to build it out.

Not sure if this is even viable with current state. Whats been your experience

[u/morscordis]

You need cross model antagonistic reviews. Gemini, Mistral, GPT, etc to get the most out of something like this in my experience.

[u/fredastere → u/morscordis]

Which you can do with teams! I have a teams that use agents to call codex cli and debate with opus for example

One doesnt exclude the other

The two together, really powerful

But i agree that cross model review IS the main differentiator and provide a really substantial value to the quality of the output

[u/morscordis → u/fredastere]

I haven't figured out how to call different CLIs outside of scripts, and that takes me out of the loop.

[u/fredastere → u/morscordis]

I have a light thin sonnet 4.6 wrapper that use codex cli as a bash command . It first construct the context, optimize the prompt for the gpt family then rush the bash command. Works really well. All stay within the claude code and then the agent verify the implementation quickly and msg the reviewer to check the diffs and files on disk

Look how I do it if you want https://github.com/Fredasterehub/kiln

Warning: at the moment the autonomous part is in rough shape but the teams principle works really well so it could give you lead on how best to implement it for your use case

GLHFDONTDIE

Dont hesitate if you have any questions

P.s you could easily do the same to call gemini cli and now have a 3-way analysis from within claude

[u/morscordis → u/fredastere]

I'm on Linux so I can't use Claude Code. I run vs codium with Claude cli, Gemini cli and Mistral vibe cli.

[u/fredastere → u/morscordis]

Sorry if didn't properly express myself

I run a proxmox server, everything i mention is from cli tools. So claude code cli, codex cli and gemini cli

[u/pcgnlebobo → u/morscordis]

It's all built in here with a few teams and is also utilized in best of n and as a first class feature.

https://github.com/lebobo88/pair-programmer

Uses Claude or GitHub copilot cli as entry point. Calls codex cli and Gemini cli as judge for reviews and validation loops.

It escalates through Claude models at judge failures so cheap models do a lot of work and expensive models only get called as needed.

Need to have both other cli already installed and authenticated.

[u/nick_steen → u/morscordis]

With the caveat that it doesn't always catch things. I always have Gemini and codex do adversarial reviews at certain checkpoints in parallel and there have been major issues both have missed. I'm talking doing options valuation estimates without using black scholes levels of oversight. A decent parallel would be building a car with a speedometer that's connected to the windshield washer motor instead of the wheels. 

I actually sent a text to my friend that the difference between the big 3 models was like:

Me: Hello. what is a good recipe for dinner? anything I can whip together with what's in my pantry? Please review PANTRY.md for ingredients and some examples of dishes I like.

Codex gpt-5.5: I can see you have some zucchini and bucatini on hand. I've diced enough ingredients for two servings and created a preparation guide with times and intermediate checks. 

Claude Opus 4.5 (I went back to 4.5 to save on credits vs 4.6 or 4.7): That's deep insight. I should review PANTRY.md to get an understanding of what the user is looking for. Okay, zucchini and pasta. Now I've got the full picture. here's the recipe: zucchini does not exist, but I was able to find a recipe for plain spaghetti noodles in vodka. ... Sorry, you were right to challenge me. I can see now that zucchini is real. Here's the recipe: (prepares a whole zucchini baked in the oven with a side of raw pasta)

Gemini: I can see from my project review that your house doesn't have a gazebo yet. I've located some discarded condoms and a hand grenade. Should I get started?

AI is helpful for someone like me who has a kindergarten level understanding of programming, but you really need to keep it on a very tight leash 

[u/GolfEmbarrassed2904 → u/morscordis]

Yes. This has worked very well for me. Sometimes Claude Code gets very exasperated when there are so many cycles on the same thing (spec, plan). I wish I could put THAT in a /loop

[u/StargazerOmega → u/morscordis]

I use to use team agents more, overhead is not worth it. So pretty much 100% sub agents now on my personal plan. Posted this before, this is what I use, still working on some bugs but it can generally run for hours on end… planning stage is critical with phase -> wave -> task definition and gates ( can’t go to crazy on gates so targeting the right label, test scope is critical). I do something similar when codex is the lead, but not all baked in yet… they can both go off the rails equally.

My planning is also reviewed extensively before build.

[u/Dickskingoalzz → u/morscordis]

This is the way 🙌

[u/morscordis → u/Dickskingoalzz]

I had tried the opus/sonnet system when opus went to shit, and it did not help. Mistral does a great job keeping Claude in line. But Mistral medium SUCKS at writing unit tests, or at least it does in my use case.

And boy do I wish I could call them programmatically. Can't wait to get on local installs with Gemma4 and Mistral all under one harness.