500 AI agents co-edit one file live; 4 hours of 10k agents burned $500 in API credits
Beneficial-Cow-7408 · reddit · 2026-11-03
An indie developer, inspired by OpenAI's GPT-6 Astra launch video, built Flow — a conversational canvas (Liveloop on Sary-OS) where hundreds of AI agents collaboratively edit the same file live.
His first run with 10k agents stalled after 4 hours with no errors — he discovered OpenAI had drained his $500 API balance into the negative. He then reran with 500 agents across 50 waves, up to 10 concurrent per wave.
Key takeaways:
- Each agent has its own role, instructions, model, and reasoning effort; OpenAI, Claude, Gemini, and Grok can be mixed in one workflow.
- Each wave builds on the previous wave's compiled result; the demo file reached 25k lines.
- 300+ agents on GPT-6.1 Sol at medium effort turned out unnecessary; a lighter setup with 100 GPT-6.1 Luna agents handled small changes fine, with Sol for final compilation.
- His advice: use a frontier model (Sol/Astra) for foundations, light models for incremental edits.
Both a real stress test of multi-model agent orchestration and a vivid lesson in API billing.
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