GPT-6 Astra Medium depleted 100% of Plus 5-hour quota in two short turns (~minutes total)

What subscription do you have?

ChatGPT Plus

Which model were you using?

GPT-6 Astra, Medium reasoning effort, in Codex

Platform

Windows / Codex local repository workflow

What issue are you seeing?

GPT-6 Astra consumed essentially the entire 5-hour Codex allowance in two very short, ordinary coding turns.

Observed usage:

• Start: 100% of the 5-hour allowance available.
• First Astra Medium turn: 100% -> 42%. This turn took less than 5 minutes.
• Second Astra Medium turn: 42% -> 0%. This turn took roughly 1–2 minutes and ended with You've hit your usage limit before the task was finished.

The conversation was not large or long-running. This was a normal repository task, not an hours-long session and not a context with many compactions.

What was Codex doing?

The task was a normal Unity repository fix:

1. Read a handful of project docs and relevant C# files.
2. Inspect procedural-world and player-controller code.
3. Make a small multi-file implementation change.
4. Add an editor test for character traversal.
5. Run Unity EditMode tests.
6. Inspect one failure (InvalidOperationException: Procedural door pool contains a destroyed object).
7. Apply a one-line follow-up fix.
8. Attempt to rerun the tests.
9. Codex hit the usage limit before completion.

The resulting diff at that point was only approximately:

4 files changed, 165 insertions(+), 7 deletions(-)

This is a routine agentic loop (edit -> test -> diagnose -> patch -> retest), not an unusually large workload.

Representative transcript excerpts

First short turn (the one that reduced the 5-hour quota from 100% to 42%):

› ok, faça

• Vou corrigir o piso externo, abrir saídas do prédio e substituir os blocos nas portas por passagens transitáveis. Também vou acrescentar testes
  com o collider do personagem para verificar a travessia das saídas e de cada cômodo.

• Ran Get-Content ... AGENTS.md; ... docs/SPEC.md ... docs/CODE_REVIEW.md ... docs/ROADMAP.md ... docs/DEPLOYMENT.md; git status --short

• Ran Get-Content ... GoProceduralWorldManager.cs ... GoProceduralRoomInstance.cs; rg -n 'CharacterController|radius|height|Move\(' ...

• Ran Get-Content ... GoProceduralWorldManager.cs ...; rg --files ...

• O Unity está aberto. Salve suas alterações e feche o Editor deste projeto para eu executar os testes automatizados; avise quando estiver fechado.

• Ran rg --files ...; Get-Content ... GoProceduralWorldManager.cs ...
• Ran Get-Content ... GoLocalPlayerMotor.cs ... GoOfflineDevBootstrap.cs ...

Second short turn, after closing Unity:

› fechei

• Edited 3 files (+35 -7)
...
• Edited Game/GatherV2/Assets/Tests/Editor/GoOfflineDevPlayModeTests.cs (+130 -0)
...
• Ran Unity.exe -batchmode ... -runTests ...
...
InvalidOperationException: Procedural door pool contains a destroyed object.
...
• Edited GoProceduralWorldManager.cs (+1 -0)
...
• Ran Unity.exe -batchmode ... -runTests ...

■ You've hit your usage limit. Upgrade to Pro, purchase more credits or try again later.

Steps to reproduce

1. Use a ChatGPT Plus account with a fresh 5-hour Codex allowance.
2. Start a relatively short Codex conversation in a normal non-trivial repository.
3. Select GPT-6 Astra with Medium reasoning effort.
4. Ask it to perform an ordinary coding task that requires a few file reads, a small implementation, and tests.
5. Check Codex usage after the first turn.
6. Continue once so it can test/fix/retest.
7. Check usage again.

In this case the two short turns consumed 58% + 42% = 100% of the 5-hour allowance.

Expected behavior

A normal coding workflow consisting of a few file reads, a small multi-file patch, one test creation, and one or two local test runs should not consume the entire Plus 5-hour quota in only a couple of minutes / two turns, especially at Medium effort.

At minimum, the quota accounting should be investigated for Astra and the product should expose enough usage telemetry to explain why a short ordinary task can consume nearly or literally the entire 5-hour allowance.

Actual impact

With this consumption rate, GPT-6 Astra is effectively unusable for real Codex development on Plus: there is not enough quota to complete even one ordinary implement -> test -> fix -> retest cycle, and it is difficult to benchmark or evaluate the model because the allowance can disappear after one or two turns.

Additional note

The percentage values above are from the Codex usage indicator observed immediately around these turns. Even if usage reporting is delayed or batched internally, the practical outcome was the same: a fresh 5-hour allowance became unavailable after two very short Astra Medium interactions.

Start by reproducing the reported workflow with a fresh ChatGPT Plus Codex allowance, GPT-6 Astra at Medium effort, and the short Unity repository task described in the issue. Compare the usage indicator before and after each turn and test run; done means the quota accounting discrepancy is explained and the expected usage or telemetry behavior is defined.