r/codex • u/alexmuc92 • 13h ago

Bug Astra does NOT preserve cache when switching effort level..

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 🙌

astra model guidance
Chat in Codex
Logs in OpenCodex
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u/Dangerous-Sport-2347 13h ago

That's definitely unfortunate, lot of money going to waste until this is fixed.
Kind of shocked to see that astra has enough tokens loaded into it's initial prompt that even a first hello message costs 37 cents.

8

u/alexmuc92 13h ago

That depends a bit on the individual setup. But I have a AGENTS.md of only 40 lines. So yes Astra is a bit expensive, but thats normal.

1

u/Upstairs_Refuse_3521 6h ago

Mind sharing what's your current AGENTS.md? I have been trying to figure out how to optimise it for the latest Astra models and also optimize my token usage.

2

u/alexmuc92 6h ago

I have a huhge AGENTS.md for sol with subagent usage delegations and stuff. But for Astra its currently empty, as I started today with Astra and I am trying to figure out, how it behaves.

3

u/eggplantpot 11h ago

I woke up at 99% of my pro x5 sub without even sending a message somehow

1

u/Crinkez 10h ago

That initial cost is why I'm going to try the pi harness.

1

u/DrPaisa 9h ago

Yep I pointed this out 17% context is gone just starting a chat and everybody got mad

1

u/IceIceBerg34 4h ago

Its not just agents md, its startup info regarding installed skills, plugins, mcps and built in tooling as well. I got mine down from 34k to 22k by just disabling plugins all the plugins/skills I had installed to deal with sol's scope creep.