How to get Codex-5.1-Max to finish long tasks?

Got the Pro plan and I’m not running out of calls.

Up-to-date VS Code Codex, thinking set to High in most instances this happens.

One of many examples was today I asked codex to iron out all the bugs detected by UV ruff and Ty, and when I had returned I saw it worked for a bit and hilariously said “I wasn’t able to finish this in the time we have.” There were >20 bugs for it to work on.
Obviously this prompted me to explain that there is no time limit. Eventually I got it to keep going for a long time until the task was done.

Does anyone have prompting techniques to push the model without having to babysit so much?

Hey, Are you seriously about that? I have also tried but failed.

I haven’t had to deal with such complex situations so far, but one thing that comes to mind is that having a proper AGENTS.md and PLANS.md help guiding the task to make it more autonomous.

You can find an example in the cookbook, or you can ask codex to make an execution plan for you before actually starting the task. This way, you can previously review it to make sure it has all the steps you want it to follow.

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At present, accomplishing this is virtually impossible; prompts have nothing to do with it. I am convinced that, in an effort to conserve resources, OpenAI has altered the system prompts and restricted the depth of reasoning. As a result, the models have become nearly unusable—they simply reiterate the task’s content multiple times instead of actually completing it.

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I wasn’t even aware of a Plans.md. I only always co-authored an Agents.md. Will check it out.

Like me, it sounds like you are WAY better off patiently awaiting GPT-6 or GPT-7. Profoundly HOPING and PRAYING you can actually use GPT-6 (or at least GPT-7) to do something both useful and commercially viable. WISH I had Better News for you chum - but it is what it is! Though if impatience gets the better of you (as I admit it often does me) perhaps the following call to arms may help:

”Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;

Or close the wall up with our English dead.

In peace there’s nothing so becomes a man

As modest stillness and humility:

But when the blast of war blows in our ears,

Then imitate the action of the tiger;

Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood,

Disguise fair nature with hard-favour’d rage;

Then lend the eye a terrible aspect;

Let pry through the portage of the head

Like the brass cannon; let the brow o’erwhelm it

As fearfully as doth a galled rock

O’erhang and jutty his confounded base,

Swill’d with the wild and wasteful ocean.

Now set the teeth and stretch the nostril wide,

Hold hard the breath and bend up every spirit

To his full height. On, on, you noblest English.

Whose blood is fet from fathers of war-proof!

Fathers that, like so many Alexanders,

Have in these parts from morn till even fought

And sheathed their swords for lack of argument:

Dishonour not your mothers; now attest

That those whom you call’d fathers did beget you.

Be copy now to men of grosser blood,

And teach them how to war!”

  • Shakespeare
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I’m going to close this now. I switched over to Claude for now.