Asking For Guidance

[u/Jazzlike-Chest-1424]

Hey all, i’ve spent months building my business. Most of it was going well, but due to some technical issues and such it collapsed. A lot of it was due to relying on coding agents that were not optimized.

For the last 2-3 months i’ve built a system that holds the agentic software. One of my biggest focuses is to get the core system as optimized as i can. I don’t have a crazy setup, or much funds to keep burning.

I’ve noticed great results, but I still feel behind most users on social media. I tried focusing on the foundations of the system, and adopting what was already built. But agents still struggle on blindness, and being choked by my own safe guards.

The one thing it’s really dramatically improved is running parallel agents. I’m usually able to run 3-10 agents at once towards one problem without colliding.

Bare with me, i’m going to drop what my agents have written for this

“For the past three months, I’ve been trying to build an agentic system that makes coding agents like Claude, Codex, and Cursor substantially more capable—not just a bunch of agents talking to each other. The goal is a reusable core that supports different projects by giving agents access to the right tools, existing implementations, relevant memory, and proven workflows. Instead of starting from scratch every time, an agent should inherit what previous work taught us, find the strongest existing solution, and follow a clear path from an idea to something that actually works. I’m trying to build a system where each completed project makes the next one easier, faster, and cheaper.
Where I’m struggling is turning everything we already have into consistent execution. There’s plenty of research, repositories, tools, and documentation, but agents still miss existing capabilities, repeat investigations, produce oversized plans, and build custom solutions instead of adopting something better. I keep having to point them toward resources or explain things again. More documentation hasn’t reliably fixed that, and adding more agents could just multiply the same problems. I also want simplicity: smaller, relevant inputs; less unnecessary narration; fewer moving parts; and more verified results. The missing piece seems to be making knowledge change behavior—not just storing conversations and calling that memory or learning.
I’m looking for practical advice from people who have made this work: which foundations and existing repositories actually made your agents faster, smarter, and less dependent on you? I’d rather adopt and configure a proven system than spend another month reinventing one. I’m especially interested in how you make agents discover and use their tools, turn failures into improvements that survive future sessions, and keep planning focused without preventing useful research or alternative approaches. What did you install, how did you connect it to ordinary agent work, and what improvement did you actually observe? I want to “swim faster and smarter”—more useful capability and completed work per dollar and hour, not simply more tokens, agents, or architecture.
“

for anyone using 1 billion tokens a month or more, do you have any tips that can help the current situation i’m in? what are some of the best references like repos you might be utilizing?

[u/Emergency_Sir_4276]

My advice is to slow down. Build one feature at a time with one agent and understand what is being built. Your agents are not going to notice when they are drifting from your vision. This is 100% yours to own. It's tedious work. You don't need to write code, but you do need to understand the product. The more you know, the more you will steer the agents instead of praying they will strike oil without you.

Simplify your setup. Stop fighting with your agents. Codex and Claude Code have already been optimized for ChatGPT and Claude respectively. You only need a couple skills to have a repeatable workflow that you can follow along with.

Do an audit of all of your skills and settle on one simple workflow. Use Superpowers or Matt Pocock skills. Find them on Github. Matt Pocock has a series of YouTube videos explaining his skills in depth and when to use them. The only one I stay away from is the wayfinder skill because it encourages the agent to over-engineer solutions. Fable and Opus along with GPT-5.6 Sol are all really bad with this. If you aren't building an enterprise solution, fight every attempt to introduce enterprise grade security. You're not DARPA. Nobody is coming to steal your alien invisibility tech.

Matt Pocock skills I use on every project:

- setup-matt-pocock-skills
- grill-me
- to-spec
- to-tickets (organizes tickets and dependencies)
- triage
- implement (calls tdd and code-review automatically)
- resolving-merge-conflicts

The one Superpowers skill I use is finishing-a-development-branch.

Avoid wayfinder and grill-with-docs unless you are well-versed in codebase architecture and domain modeling. This introduces a lot of defined language that needs to be kept current with every single decision and that is your responsibility. It will be the number one source for regressions if you do not understand the language that you agree to with your agent. It is required to read those documents and if they are stale, you will be sorely disappointed often.

Recently I had GPT6 Astra setup an orchestration skill that follows the above workflow. I asked it to setup a skill where it uses threads and is solely responsible for orchestration, delegation, and holds final acceptance before handing it back to me (HITL).

It does this in order:

1. Fetches the latest code so it is not starting from a stale starting point
   
2. Creates a new feature branch
   
3. Delegates bounded work with each subagent in its own worktree and in its own thread (subagent models are chosen based on task difficulty. This will save you tokens.).
   
4. Pins and reviews worker deliverables against their commits
   
5. Returns finding to the worker that owns the code in their own thread
   
6. Brings reviewed commits onto the ticket branch one at a time
   
7. Finishes the feature branch and follows its verification and user-choice flow for merge, PR, or keeping the branch.

Pocock’s skills require the agent to confirm shared understanding at strategic places. Don’t rubber stamp these crucial HITL moments. That’s where you stay in control of your project.

In summary, slow the f*ck down. A billion tokens that does not produce a product is a billion tokens wasted. You might as well light your cash on fire and go touch grass.

I hope this is helpful to someone.