openai / openai/codex

Long running goal sessions consume usage even though token usage appears to be low

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#38,524 2 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

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bug CLI context rate-limits
Dominant language
Rust
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PR merge metrics
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Description

What issue are you seeing?

I noticed that my usage on the Pro 20x plan is getting consumed way faster when I use the /goal.

The small context window of the model forces for many compactions over long sessions and the initial instructions are not followed as expected. The model looks like its getting obsessed over something that is not crucial to the goal.

Also the goal tracker itself is mentioning that the total goal tokens were 8,388,753 my usage is down to 5% remaining. I do not believe that other tasks / sessions would consume 95% of the usage from the 20x Pro plan, even though they might use more tokens, the only difference is that I did not use goal for them.

Also token reset feels wrong. It is randomized and we have to follow updates on X, which is unprofessional. It should be an official announcement not a tweet. We are organizing our work around the resets and having to reset in 7 days while we were to reset on Monday is totally messing with our workflow and productivity...

So the issue is that setting goal consuming hidden tokens that we can not track why and how they are used since the goal tracker total is 8 million tokens that is not equivalent to 95% of usage for the 20x Pro plan.

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What steps can reproduce the bug?

Set a goal for a big feature over a huge codebase let the long session run unattended and see the usage consumption vs the actual token usage of the session.

What is the expected behavior?

The usage of the 20x Pro plan should not be consumed that fast on a task that used 8 million tokens.

Additional information

I would like to be able to see the usage of the task in more details and the explanation on why my subscription usage got consumed that fast while the tokens used were so little.

Contributor guide

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First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

No files, tests, or entry points are named. Start by tracing how long-running goal sessions and compactions are counted against subscription usage, then compare that accounting with the goal tracker’s reported tokens; done means the discrepancy is explained or corrected and detailed usage is available.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
rust
Domain
cli
Issue type
Bug
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Quiet
Clarity
Needs clarification
Newbie friendliness
35/100

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