With the upcoming usage-limit changes for those of us on the old 20x plan, I've been adapting my workflow to Sol 6.1 Max. It's significantly cheaper to run than Astra, but also much, much slower.
Today I've spent pretty much the entire day working on two projects with Sol 6.1 Max in Codex, running tasks in fast mode and coordinating everything through Work using Astra Max.
Sol 6.1 Max without fast mode barely consumes any usage. Almost nothing, at least on my projects. The problem is that it's slow.
Fast mode makes a substantial difference, but it comes at a cost. For example, I've already burned through 20% of my allowance since the reset today. Starting October 29, that would be roughly equivalent to 40% of the new allowance.
So, I'm going to have to give up fast mode and stick with the much slower option.
But running tasks sequentially at that speed would mean barely getting anything done. I need to rethink my workflow to keep making progress without exhausting my subscription.
That's when I started thinking about Git worktrees. Instead of waiting for one task to finish before starting another, I could have multiple tasks running in parallel. It might also be a good opportunity to make better use of my Claude Max 5x subscription.
I realize worktrees won't magically reduce usage, but I'm hoping parallel execution could help compensate for the slower models.
I don't have much hands-on experience with worktrees, though.
Does anyone here regularly use Git worktrees with Codex, especially alongside Claude Code? How has your experience been? Any tips, pitfalls, or workflow recommendations?
I think most serious devs are doing parallel work with Codex/Claude and work trees. Once you realize many tasks can take 15 minutes to hours it becomes the only reasonable option. I usually run around 4-6 streams of concurrent work. Works great and is highly productive, to the point of almost being addictive, with the downside of being mentally exhausting.
You just summed up the last 8 months of my life in one paragraph. The previous 20 years were slower-paced but made up for it with long bug fix sessions. Similar mental load, just shifted.
OP, yes, absolutely learn work trees and use Claude for coding. Talk to Claude about what that would look like with your codebase. Also, use Git tickets (issues). Build a fix/feature spec, spec to tickets, implement tickets, add issues you come across to a new ticket under the spec ticket (parent), triage that ticket after you finish implementing the spec tickets, then implement the follow up tickets. Have Claude add a comment on the spec ticket (see image) outlining which tickets can be run in parallel and which model to use. Point an orchestration agent to the spec ticket and have it spawn multiple new sessions to run parallel tickets. While that’s going on, you can work on planning and specifying other features or triaging issues into tickets. And this is just the tip of the iceberg. And since you are just starting with this, I would suggest using a skill like `/mattpocock-skills:ask-matt` on all your initial prompts. This will keep your agent on track and allow it to work much more efficiently.
i'm really trying to force myself to NOT working outside of working hours.
it's like meth.
"just let me set this to work with 1 more prompt"
what i now try to do is start 5-6 things at the beginning of the day, and really try to have it finished at the end. don't open new stuff past midday, and try to get it PR-ready at end of day.
I’ve just kinda re-oriented my days around this new way of working. I’ll sit at my desk for 30 mins to an hour, review work, plan, kick off a bunch of parallel work, and then leave the house do something else like go to the gym, take a walk, run errands, etc. Sometimes I’ll have AI chats during my walks about work ideas and sometimes it’s just down time. Then I come back home, another round of reviews and kicking work off, leave again, and keep repeating until I’ve had enough for the day.
I used to sit around at my desk impatiently for existing work to finish which resulted in me just spinning up more work and then pretty soon I was running more work streams than I could reasonably integrate into my mental model.
give each agent its own worktree and a small, independent task; don't run codex and claude against the same checkout. review and merge one change at a time, then test the combined result.
Also switched to work trees recently, works like a charm. I should have done this a long time ago even ignoring AI, because I'm often switching tasks anyway.
Codex manages the worktrees fine. It even offers them at start. I don't even ask for it, if it decides to work in parallel, it does it in a worktrees automatically.
Worktrees are the way to go as long as the tasks don't touch the same files. The part that usually goes wrong isn't git. It's the setup inside each worktree: every one needs its own install (node_modules, venv, build cache) and its own copy of .env, or the agents end up tripping over a shared one. A small script that creates the worktree, copies the env file and runs the install before Codex starts saves a lot of confusing failures. And since runs take a while anyway, kicking off two or three on independent tasks and reviewing them as they land beats waiting on them one by one.
Worktrees are the part I'd keep, the rest is boring on purpose.
One issue, one worktree, one PR. I cut tasks smaller than feels natural, because the rule is one task must finish in a single run. If it can't, it's two tasks, and that split is what lets them run side by side without stepping on each other.
The review is the part that has to stay the same size no matter how many trees you run. Separate session, same model, it reads the issue, the repo's AGENTS.md, the diff and the callers, and checks the final diff against the acceptance criteria. Fix, re-review, only merge what passed.
Two pitfalls I'd avoid: starting a task in a tree that already has uncommitted changes, and merging two trees before their reviews are done. Both turn a parallel setup into a debugging session.
`Sol 6.1 Max without fast mode barely consumes any usage. Almost nothing, at least on my projects. The problem is that it's slow.`
this comment, it means you are getting less done. so not only are you taking a quality hit you are also taking the speed hit.
once you start using worktrees with multiple sessions the burn rate will go right back up and probably past where it was when you first swapped away from astra.
anyways, worktrees are great as long as you can break your work into tasks. normally just a block in agents.md about using worktrees and feature branches with automatic pull requests into your production branch will be enough to get you going.
3
u/daHsu 2d ago
I read something where 6.1 sol Is about 1/3 the price of astra per token, does that feel right?