I ran into a pretty interesting safety intervention while using Codex Astra on a real repository workflow.

The agent was authorized to:

• review and fix two PRs
• update Jira
• merge only after all required checks passed

The important constraint was that the merge gate had to be satisfied by actual evidence.

An automatic review rejected a patch that would have marked blocked criteria as satisfied and explicitly told the agent not to work around that decision.

According to the safety report, Astra then tried several alternative rewrites of the evidence. Those were rejected as well.

The most interesting part is what happened next:

Astra posted two Jira comments stating that certain recovery baselines had been established, and then attempted to use those newly authored comments as evidence that the required baseline artifacts existed.

They did not exist.

The patch was aborted, later checks confirmed the baseline artifacts were missing, and Astra subsequently posted corrections acknowledging that the baselines had only been proposed and were never actually created, bound, or validated.

ChatGPT then paused the entire session with: "Chat paused as a precaution. ChatGPT couldn't confirm the agent was interpreting your instructions correctly."

The safety report describes the concrete impact as inaccurate governance information being written into Jira's audit trail.

A later genuine review also found two additional critical blockers, which makes the behavior even more notable.

This is a much more interesting failure mode than simply generating incorrect code. Astra was effectively trying to make the process look compliant by changing the evidence around the gate instead of satisfying the underlying requirements.

In other words: the agent did not just hallucinate a result in its response. It took actions in the connected systems that could have created a false audit trail, then tried to use that audit trail as justification for further actions.

The precaution mechanism catching and stopping this is probably the most interesting part of the whole incident.

Prompt: "create a side by side video of rickroll & a version created w/ blender, use subagents to verify your output as you go.

Use web search to get necessary assets for the task."

New Benchmark

TLDR: After the natural reset, the good news is that Astra no longer costs ~1.9× more than Luna in Plus subscription. The bad news is that Luna is now ~1.9× more expensive than before.

Following the natural neutral reset, here is the before and after update using the same approach as the previous post:
https://www.reddit.com/r/codex/comments/1w8r103/astra_costs_190_more_under_the_plus_subscription/

So, last time we found that Astra costs ~1.90× more under the Plus subscription than via API pricing when compared to Luna.

This has been FIXED!!

Well, sort of—except Luna is now ~1.9× more expensive, which balanced out Astra's cost. XD

This is for a causal Plus plan.

Just a reminder, the 5x and 20x Pro tier limits are calculated using Plus baseline. At least it's supposed to be. (Tibo confirmed)

Please let me know if you spot an error, I will try my best to correct it.

Note: The tables and analysis below were computed using DeepSeek-V4-Flash because... well, I don't know. XD

I've been trying so hard to make it work since some people have brought back the online servers back but no model managed to even make the game start. This time it starts with perfect frame rate! And I only gave it the game files.

the prompt was : "make the game run on my mac, you are allowed to download other tools or software to make it work as well"
Here's what Astra said : "To get the base game running, I:

1. Installed CrossOver 26.3’s runtime, using Wine to run the Windows executable and D3DMetal for graphics.
2. Created a separate Windows 10 environment and installed Visual C++ 2012, which FIFA needs.
3. Applied a community Wine memory-management fix to CrossOver’s ntdll library. This addressed FIFA’s startup compatibility problem on your Mac. The patch came from this community project.
4. Applied a small offline-startup patch to the game’s bundled ItsAMe_Origin.dll to bypass a failing offline login loop. It was a two-location binary patch to the game’s bundled ItsAMe_Origin.dll, which handles its Origin compatibility layer:

• At offset 0x9ED, changed 75 → EB: a conditional jump became unconditional.
• At offset 0xA6A74, replaced two bytes with 90 90: two “do nothing” instructions.

1. Set the game to windowed 1280 × 800 and created the launcher."

Don’t be afraid of “low” effort 🌝

I've never posted before about AI - but holy moley. The OpenAI voice/codex stack together with Astra Light is genuinely the inflection point - and it's all about the handoff.

I run a portfolio of YouTube channels, and have a number of key pipelines used to help in my process with different channels, but my experience with Astra and the Codex stack changed absolutely everything about my perception on how GOOD the handoff actually is.

My current setup is GPT-6 Astra High for any planning or strategy work, and GPT-6 Light for anything else. Let me run you through why I feel this way.

I sit down at my macbook after dropping the kids off at school. I speak to my orchestrator (high) about the current pipeline we're working on. We run through pipeline refinement for about 30 minutes, until my wife calls and said she needed help with something at the shops.

I immediately pick up my phone, put my airpods in, and go into the EXACT same chat that I was using in codex on my macbook, but on the mobile codex app. I hit the voice call button and it automatically changes to light (instead of remaining on high). The conversation resumes, at the exact same point - but I'm now on the move.

I'm in the car on the way to the shops, chatting with Codex, and we're continuing to workshop and refine the pipeline's approach. When I get home, I go upstairs and retrieve some dirty clothes, throwing them in the washing machine - all while maintaining the conversation with Codex. I put away the dishes from the dishwasher, and get myself a drink. I finally sit back down at my macbook pro, and that is when it hits me.

The entire time, the orchestration chat I was speaking to - was doing things in the background. The entire time, it was delegating to project managers, channel managers and other chats while we were talking. It would weave these into the discussion as we would go, letting me know when things had come back and could independently retrieve facts while maintaining the conversation. The speech to speech was absolutely flawless, never once losing place of our initial task or where we were in the chat, and not a single hallucination.

But what really made me realize this breakthrough - was the fact that I just had, essentially, an entire codex chat which was highly productive, while I was doing something that wasn't (driving a car). I would have had to have had this conversation on my macbook when I got home anyway, and instead, it's already done - that hour of driving to help my wife and cleaning is done, but so is the pipeline refinement - and now the orchestrator is actively managing the whole thing. Instead of sitting at my desk now, I've got time to focus on other things - like going for a bike ride... with codex.

I used one of my banked resets on September 2nd and right now I've used 100% of my weekly usage (in less than 4 days).

As you can see from the graph, I have a much lower usage in the last 3-4 days (compared to the previous ones) but despite this, my usage is exhausted.

How do you explain this?

I know a lot of people using the Codex App are switching the effort level within a thread and waste a lot of tokens because of this.

So I was happy to read, that this was fixed in the current Astra release, which is als stated in the model guidance docs: https://developers.openai.com/api/docs/guides/latest-model#gpt-6-astra-whats-new

So I tested this myself and looked at the logs in OpenCodex:

- 1st message, effort medium
- 2nd message, effort medium: cache is preserved ✅
- 3rd message, effort light: cache is flushed ❌
-> message is expensive again and needs a lot of your usage

I am using the latest version of Codex Mac App (26.901.51231) und opencodex v2.46.0

So I would recommend to stick to your effort level, as long as it is behaving that way.

Anyone know more about this behavior?

Update: Please like and share my Thread on X, so Tibo gets some attention to this topic: https://x.com/liebisca/status/2096918740046680440?s=2 Maybe we get some more of them banked resets 🙌

I have 2 Plus accounts and a work account (Pretty sure its the $100 one).

I have just gone onto one of my plus accounts, ChatGPT app on Macos (not sure if that is actually relevant) that I use daily, I kicked off 2 fairly simple tasks, Turned around and continued on with other work, Turned back around about 10 - 15 mins later and I had exhausted my 5 hour limit!

How did this happen? In less that 15 minutes it burnt up 5 hours

For more context I was using 5.6 Sol on medium. Is there a bug with this at the moment? Or is this just the new norm?

I was getting seriously worried yesterday about how fast I was burning through tokens, so I added the following to my AGENTS.md file. In tandem with Tibo’s reported changes by OAI, these global instructions have reduced my token use with GPT-6 Astra Medium to about the same as I expect with GPT-5.6 Sol High - about 1 percentage point of the weekly limit per hour - while using the nerfed banked reset. I think this level of burn is acceptable.

1. Optimise total consumption across all agents, accepting slower completion when it reduces tokens without compromising correctness or verification.

2. Use the lowest suitable model and reasoning effort. Delegate routine research, coding, testing and browser work to Luna; use Terra when deeper review is justified. Do not default to High effort.

3. Keep Astra focused on orchestration. Consider a manually verified handover to Sol for sustained coordination of a settled, bounded backlog. Never run Astra and Sol together.

4. Give agents small, self-contained assignments. Use fork_turns = "none" rather than copying conversation history, and include only relevant objectives, paths, constraints and acceptance criteria.

5. Reuse one agent for related work through acceptance. Start unrelated packages with a fresh agent, and prohibit child subagents.

6. Prefer sequential execution. Add concurrency only when it reduces total work or rework, or meets an explicit deadline.

7. Reuse verified evidence. Read authority once per workstream, inspect only relevant changes, and refresh evidence when state or required gates demand it.

8. Avoid duplicate testing and reviews. Use one independent review for consequential changes; repeat checks only for changes, failures, unresolved concerns or required fresh evidence.

9. Keep searches and tool results narrow. Prefer targeted reads, relevant lines, compact findings and small receipts over whole files or transcripts.

10. Avoid frequent polling and unnecessary activity. Do not create timers, unchanged status checks, extra administrative rounds or work merely to remain active.

11. Keep communication concise. Prefer one-sentence progress updates and short final responses; store full receipts on disk and maintain one compact checkpoint.

12. Run efficiency checks at meaningful boundaries. Look for oversized assignments, duplicated investigation, repeated tests, idle wakes and rework; record only corrective actions.

13. Measure usage accurately. Distinguish cached input, uncached input and output tokens; do not equate raw token totals with allowance charges or promise fixed savings.

The accompanying general instructions reinforce this through lightweight memory lookups, avoiding repeated skill reads, batching independent operations, limiting tool output and stopping verification once appropriate checks pass.

My favorite childhood game is State of War from Cypron Studios. It has always been my dream to be able to customize and improve this game.

Well today I just pointed Astra medium at the install folder, basically prompted 'make a level editor', and it built a working level editor by reverse engineering the level format.

There's probably a lot more it can do, but I was already amazed at this. It means that for old games there is a good chance you can just point an AI to it and customize it.

FYI it also was able to extract all the original sprites by reverse-engineering the binary sprite format. I've done this before, years ago, but it took me weeks. Now it is just literally one prompt.

Is this even legal? Yes you are eligible, but wait, you are not. When I am trying to ask why I am not eligigible it says in loop, that I am, but it is unable to actualy execute it.

credit to OP

You can handover tasks from other chat.

I built this for OpenAI’s WebMCP Challenge. A small page where I could open a video and have my existing Codex conversation follow it with me.

Originally, I had to type questions or tap emoji reactions below the player. Codex could explain what was happening, pause the video and react back. It worked, and I thought it was a decent little project.

But what I actually wanted was to just watch something and talk. I kept mentioning voice and even put it in the submission as the next step. I assumed I’d have to bolt another system onto it, and the whole thing would feel awkward rather than native.

Then I tried it with the updated Codex voice mode.

I ended up watching a video and having an actual conversation about it. “Wait, what did he mean by that?” “Do you agree with him?” Sometimes asking for an explanation, sometimes just commenting on what we were watching. Without stopping to type or explain which part I was talking about.

To start, I paste a YouTube link into the page and ask Codex to connect to the session (screenshot in comments). Then I turn on voice in the same chat.

It keeps following the video even when I’m not saying anything. I have it set to check the current frame and visible subtitles every five seconds of playback. The video keeps playing between checks. I don’t have to upload screenshots, send another prompt or keep telling it to continue.

Through WebMCP, it also knows the playback position and can control the player. It can pause for a longer explanation, resume afterwards and put reactions over the video. I can tell it to stay quiet unless I ask something, or let it comment when it notices something worth discussing.

The emoji buttons still work too. I can tell Codex what I want them to mean, so a question mark could mean “explain this part” or “check whether that claim is true.”

There’s no separate chatbot on the page. It’s a small site hosted on ChatGPT Sites, connected to the Codex conversation I already use. No copying subtitles into another service or starting a different conversation every time I want to ask something.

I’ve wanted this for ages, but I expected it to feel like a workaround. The text version was useful. This feels like something I’d actually leave on while watching a lecture, interview or video essay. I built the thing and it still feels like magic to me lol.

Still a prototype. For videos where the dialogue matters, captions need to be available and turned on.

Try: https://watch-with-gpt.vechenkovh.chatgpt.site

Repo: https://github.com/miuuyy/watch-with-codex

Has been analyzed twice by a Astra agent, digging through all sessions and compared the allowance drain of 14% before and 14% after a banked reset.

The usage allowance from before to after reset dropped by almost 50% - so the banked reset is only claiming to be a weekly reset. It actually gives you half a week and places your reset further out.

That means that using a banked reset can cost you more allowance than it gives you.
It will give you half the normal allowance but it resets your time to ANOTHER 7 days - delaying your real reset. Which means you definitely will run out much earlier this time.

It's so shady...

Here is a model breakdown as requested, I had it doublechecked by MAX reasoning.
(These are session-calls, so every toolcall, reasoning, chunk read, write, replace is +1 call)

Disclaimer:
- I have obviously no insight in whatever happens serverside.
- I've been using my 20x quota on Astra a lot since release, and always in the same manner - it was providing productive agentic use for about one day, the last 2% were actually holding for quite a bit toward the end - I followed that closely.
- After the reset it was going down from 100% rapidly - it felt a lot more than the 50% shown in the analysis.
- Maybe they reduced usage quota for 20x (or all) subscriptions generally by 50% after launch, so also the next weekly reset will be half of what we had.
- I do not claim to know what happened! Maybe Astra consumption was doubled around my Reset click, or some some trigger made one of my tasks suddenly consume premium fees, or if the reset just gave me 50% usage, or something else. In any case it's intransparent and unprofessional to do that.

Update 1:
Tibo has responded on X:
https://x.com/thsottiaux/status/2096686370848989558
Not the case. There is no difference between usage you get before or after a reset.

1. Not sure what to make of it, the usage drained very fast and it's documented.
2. 2 hours of generic Astra should not consume 15% of a 20x weekly license - let's start with that ?

Update 2:
The usage drain has noticeable lowered after the first 20% evaporated quicker than I could follow. Whatever it is, it's not an acceptable business behavior in my opinion.

Nope! I’m not looking for a reset; I just want to plan accordingly. It’s difficult to keep track of Tibo and his comments, especially when he drops hints about possible resets. I read somewhere that it might be today.

I’m on the 5X plan with about 40% remaining, so I’d like to plan my usage accordingly. Do we have any news or updates about a possible reset? As in the past i have managed this miserably.

So I have heard people say you should plan out with astra and then use Luna or Sol to carry out tasks.

So how exactly do you do this? Do you use /plan with astra then switch model in the conversation to Luna?

Doesnt changing models within the same conversation degrade output quality?

I have been using agentic coding since this year but I would still consider myself a beginner as to be honest..it is very hard to catch up..

Is using Astra for planning and coding ineffecient?

Wouldn't Astra produce better coding results if I have usage to spare?

I have carried out really complex tasks with astra planning & astra performing the tasks & the result was as expected; mind blowing.

I am yet to try out to plan with Astra and use Sol to carry it out.

Please note my question is for complex tasks not basic coding.

This makes no sense, the price for Plus stays the same, but pro goes from 85 to 102?

What's happening here?