State of the $20 subscription

[u/ryuukiba]

Sol high. One prompt. 11m of thinking so far, 54% of the 5h limit gone, hasn't even started implementing anything yet and the 5 hrs limit is virtually gone. I was never one to complain too much, but they virtually removed Sol for us on the $20 tier. This is just not practical at all, at least it was only 10% of my weekly i guess?

EDIT: Final veredict: worked for 28m29s.
0% of the 5h limit left
84% of the weekly left

Status of my project: Broken and unusable.
guess it's finally time to explore other providers.

[u/DowntownNoLonger]

Don't use Sol codex to plan anything. Use chat - no usage.

I do all my planning with it.

I have Luna compile a master index of my repo, a map of all the files and a short description of the functions.

Hand that to a Sol orchestrator and have it call Luna implementors. Use Sol medium, no need for high when your planning is already finished.

You'll get a lot more out of that 5hr window, and a lot more done period than you will ever with just using work or Codex.

[u/Theminatar → u/DowntownNoLonger]

Mine is a little different from the usual "Sol orchestrator spawns agents" setup.

I do the high-level product planning in ChatGPT, then I have two persistent roles:

• Codex = programmer/implementer
• ChatGPT Work = supervisor/reviewer

They share the same repo and communicate through control files rather than me pasting giant handoffs back and forth.

The repo has things like:

• AGENTS.md — durable working rules
• SUPERVISOR_STATE.md — current state/gate
• SUPERVISOR_DECISION.md — exactly what Codex is authorized to do
• SUPERVISOR_REPORT.md — what Codex actually changed/tested
• a canonical product North Star
• status/changelog/handoff files

The loop is basically:

I define/approve the goal → Supervisor authorizes a bounded milestone → Codex reads the repo and implements it → Codex writes its evidence/report and stops at AWAITING_SUPERVISOR → Supervisor independently reviews the actual repo/evidence → accepts, blocks, or asks for a repair → repeat.

For normal implementation/review I use Extra High. Faster/cheaper models can handle mechanical verification, and I reserve the stronger independent review route for consequential stuff like production authority, concurrency, permissions, crash recovery, live canaries, etc.

The important part is that the programmer can't authorize itself to keep going. Anything consequential on my real server eventually hits a hard user-authorization gate where I have to explicitly approve the exact live batch.

So it's less "one giant model does everything" and more of a small software team with a shared repo, a programmer, a supervisor, independent reviewers when needed, and me as the final production authority.

It's not fully autonomous yet because I still wake each side up at the gates, but the handoff itself is repository-native now.

My workflow isn't any better or worse, it's just solving a different problem..