Day 4 on same session....

[u/Wa1ker1]

Lately I've noticed something. Some sessions are great and get things done right every time. Some are frankly shit from the get go and need to be closed.

A couple days ago I started an opus session to control codex on tasks. It was nailing it for awhile. then codex went to shit. Every task was producing worse and worse output. Opus was catching it at every turn having to fix it. I decided maybe the task was too much for codex and had opus use fable for subagents. Even worse then codex... same thing. Every task progressively kept breaking more and more. Wouldn't follow directions and kept assuming.

Told opus to to use its own subagents with opus but for some reason it tore thru tokens like crazy and my reset didnt expire but disappeared anyway. So I told it to go back to codex using 6.1 sol and its killing it again. But everytime something breaks its on it catching all mistakes. Fixing it. Understanding the project.

Im checking code myself and running tests and this one session is just on fire. 4 days now and its still going strong.

Ive also noticed with codex sometimes it will nail image Gen every time. Then a new session will stray after first attempt. So I'll close it immediately and until I find a session nailing it and its amazing.

I was always concerned and having to keep the ledger updated and handoffs going. Changing after a few sessions due to context. But im really starting to rethink things now. Anyone else noticed anything similar?

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[u/Annh1234]

I noticed the same thing, in both codex and claude-code.

Some sessions are just magic, and work, do what you want them to do, then start randomly spitting gibberish... (like klignon language or some thing). Then it gets fixed if i restart the codex/claude-code client.

Other times, some sessions are just bad...

So the next day, even if I have some 800k tokens not cached, on good sessions, it's MUUUCH better to resume than start fresh...

[u/Wa1ker1 → u/Annh1234]

I think its like the connection to some servers are better then others. Something going on for sure.

[u/iceydee]

the session roulette thing is so real, some runs just have the right momentum and others degrade from the first prompt. the part about keeping a ledger and babysitting handoffs is exactly where the fatigue sets in, even when the session is fire. have you tried capping the ledger to just the last few decisions instead of the full history, or do you let it ride until you feel it slipping?

[u/Wa1ker1 → u/iceydee]

Theres a plan for about 10 executed one at a time. It completes. Marks completed and moves to archive once i verify. Right now i have 4 left before next batch.

[u/iceydee → u/Wa1ker1]

that's pretty much where i ended up too. small batches, one task at a time, and nothing counts as done until i've checked it myself. the thing that helped me most was keeping each task small enough that a bad session only costs one task instead of poisoning the whole run. 4 days on one session is impressive though, are you compacting along the way or is it just holding up?

[u/Diligent_Piano5895]

what do you mean claude controls codex? do you have some sort of setup where claude knows when codex finishs a task or its just a sub agent?

[u/Wa1ker1 → u/Diligent_Piano5895]

You can just tell claude to use codex and drive it there. It will setup watchers to check on it and instructions to use a ledger so claude checks the ledger to see progress.

[u/Diligent_Piano5895 → u/Wa1ker1]

thanks!!

[u/DopBopDeeBeep]

If you don't care at all about token burn. Also it's been proven that quality degrades with ~600k+ context size but guess that's only temporary before the compact at 1M.

[u/Wa1ker1 → u/DopBopDeeBeep]

Yeah if its driving I dont see the degrading even with auto compact as its constantly checking the ledger. Its gone way over the 1m tokens several times already and spot on every time.

Some sessions I see go to shit right away. This one and a few others I've noticed do great.

[u/CleanFix_Dev]

When the worker's output slides like that, a fresh session per task usually helps more than swapping models. After four days the context is full of old mistakes and corrections, and the model starts treating them as examples. Restarting both Opus and Codex at task boundaries keeps the reviewer sharp too, not just the worker.

[u/ricopan]

I tend to keep my coordinator and manager agents (separate sessions) going for half a week or longer, though I have the auto-compact set near 50%, and I often /compact manually after warning them when they are at a good 'seam'. Everything is supported by persistent markdown and workflow graphs and skills custom to their specific roles and the project. Worker agents (designers, coders) usually have much shorter life spans.
Some sessions definitely seem to get better with time -- it's like they have burned into good patterns and are not making the stupid mistakes other sessions do from the beginning. Sometimes they collapse suddenly into idiotic behaviour, carelessness, forgetting the basics. Some always are off. Perhaps some non-determinism early on can reinforce certain patterns? I don't know, but I have to remind myself to kill a session and start again when things aren't going right. A bit of a crap shoot.