Denying GPT-6.1 Sol write access as orchestrator cut coding costs 77%, at 6x runtime
GapNew4766 · reddit · 2026-09-30
The same experiment as the earlier post, framed around orchestration discipline: the author gave GPT-6.1 Sol a hard "no" as orchestrator — it reads, plans, delegates and reviews, but every write or shell call is refused; only local Qwen 3.8 27B workers on a single RTX 3090 touch files. The rationale is cost plus discipline: the expensive model shouldn't spend tokens typing code, and if it can fix things itself it stops delegating.
Across three small 3D games, total spend fell from $0.75 to $0.17 (77% cut: 87% on pool, 57% on bowling, 73% on foosball), with runtime rising from under 7 minutes to 43 minutes. One absurdity: even a one-character typo must be sent back to a worker as a task.
The author is torn on a middle ground — allowing tiny edits under a size limit, or risking the orchestrator doing everything again — and asks whether others running Sol as an orchestrator gave it write access.
Related event: Cloud Planner Plus Local Coder Cuts API Costs by 77%(3 posts)→
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