If you mean Codex is better at planning, I've heard the exact opposite. I'm told it's a beast if you tell it exactly what you need as it will execute it to the T whereas Claude will push back or do its own thing either because it thinks it's wrong or because it's feeling lazy
gpt-5.4 xhigh is a beast you only wanna unleash on your most complex tasks or spend 30 minutes watching the model reasoning how to do a git commit. For everything else i'd happily use a saner model like sonnet.
I've started hitting Codex quota regularly for the first time the last couple of weeks, so I feel like they might be tightening the screws on the $20/month plan too. Someone paying for Max might have to work at it to hit the quota
Interestingly, this was always true, it's just made more obvious when it takes less time to bring a product to a potential customer.
Launching a product was never the finish line; it was always the start line. But technical founders could trick themselves into thinking that building a product was building a business.
The same "Lean Startup" rules apply. Build something and get it in front of real people who will pay you for the thing. If they won't, back to the drawing board.
The only real "shift" I've seen is that most startups don't actually need VC at all. That's a great thing.
Why did this become an issue seemingly overnight when 1M context has been available for a while, and I assume prompt caching behavior hasn't changed?
EDIT: prompt caching behavior -did- change! 1hr -> 5min on March 6th. I'm not sure how starting a fresh session fixes it, as it's just rebuilding everything. Why even make this available?
It feels like the rules changed and the attitude from Anth is "aw I'm sorry you didn't know that you're supposed to do that." The whole point of CC is to let it run unattended; why would you build around the behavior of watching it like a hawk to prevent the cache from expiring?
This is not accurate. The main agent typically uses a 1h cache (except for API customers, which can enable 1h but it is not on by default because it costs more). Sub-agents typically use a 5m cache.
As of yesterday subagents were often getting the entire session copied to them. Happened to me when 2 turns with Claude spawned a subagent, caused 2 compactions, and burned 15% of my 5-hour limit (Max 5x).
how long they stay around after the cache miss is irrelevant if I am burning all the prior tokens again. also, how much context they have depends entirely on the task and your workflow. I you have a subagent implement a feature and use the compile + test loop to ensure it is implemented correctly before a supervisor agent reviews what was implemented vs asked then yes, subagents do have a lot of context.
I'd say it's next to impossible to have a subagent doing a compile+test loop where at least 1 call doesn't get made to the API over multiple 5-minute stretches to keep the cache warm. In such a case it may just be the same as doing the compile+test manually and then having the agent troubleshoot any issues before iterating.
but how to make claude-code send that when paying by API-key?
or when using a custom ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL? (requests will contain cache_control, but no ttl!)
2.1.108
Added ENABLE_PROMPT_CACHING_1H env var to opt into 1-hour prompt cache TTL on API key, Bedrock, Vertex, and Foundry (ENABLE_PROMPT_CACHING_1H_BEDROCK is deprecated but still honored),
and FORCE_PROMPT_CACHING_5M to force 5-minute TTL
docs are not updated yet, directly from the changelog^
And this is "a bit better" - but seemingly still nowhere close to what subscribers get where main thread, agent, initial and follow-up messages may all get there own ?intelligent? 5min or 1h decision :/
I am trying hard to keep a positive attitude about this mission but I keep feeling like it's vanity marketing for America, more than science, or pushing the frontier. "Hey everyone, remember when we got to the moon FIRST? Good times." Ultimately, we did all of this a half century ago. The lasting impression is a reminder of how underfunded the space program has been all these decades. Why go to the moon again? The answer in the 60s was: because it's there. And that was enough. But now? Is it -really- a training ground for Mars?
Judging by the fact that almost nobody in the mainstream talked about this until a week leading up to the mission, and that it’s been 10+ years in the making, I doubt it’s some vanity thing.
I don’t see how anything as substantive like this can be seen as “vanity” (unless you mean to count that as a bonus).
It’s amazing to see NASA doing newer great things (Webb, Mars probes, all have been incredibly cool too, but manned stuff always hits a different note). Yes they’re way more expensive than SpaceX, I get all that. But it’s nice to see something so overwhelmingly positive and a true example of human ingenuity, collaboration, and bravery, that we need a lot more of that to remind us these days of the positive times we live in.
And the fact that we did this 50 years ago, at least to me, means I appreciate even more how we got it done with that age’s technology and knowledge the first time.
The answer in the 60s was "to beat the Soviets". Today, we are partially doing it to beat China, but we really are gearing up for Mars.
You can't just start from zero and fly to Mars. You need to build an entire workforce able to produce and operate fantastically complicated machines. And you need to fly regular missions, each more ambitious than the last, until finally we can land people on the Red Planet.
"Useless" and "counter-productive" are value judgements, not objective conclusions.
My opinion is that landing humans on Mars could be the start of a new age of exploration, which would massively benefit humanity. And the risk of contamination is worth the potential reward.
That's just my opinion, of course, but it happens to be NASA's opinion as well.
Of course, not only they depend on it, but also they love doing that. And as an engineer of course I find it cool. That's not a reason to say it's useful though.
> landing humans on Mars could be the start of a new age of exploration, which would massively benefit humanity. And the risk of contamination is worth the potential reward.
How informed is that? Let me say two things:
1. There may have been life on Mars. That we could discover an analyse with robots. Now the day a human lands on Mars, this ruins it. If we ever find a trace of life on Mars after that, we will never know if we brought it there or not. In terms of science, that is a massive loss.
2. Are you aware that if we ever reach Mars, it's the final stop? The next solar system is more than 4 light-years away. At the speeds we can reach, it would take tens of thousands (hundreds of thousands) of years for a ship to get there. See the problem? And that's the closest one.
Going to Mars is not helping us go further: there is nothing further, just empty space. Unless we revolutionise fundamental physics (but sending humans to Mars does nothing in that direction, you need physicists to discover new theories for that).
So why go to Mars? You think we can bring an atmosphere there and make it like the Earth? We demonstrably cannot survive on Earth, and somehow you think that we can take an empty planet like Mars and build an Earth from scratch there? Really?
You prefer keeping Mars pristine, in case it has life. I prefer colonizing Mars, even if it risks contamination.
This is not an argument over facts. This is a difference in preferences. I'm not going to convince you to prefer what I prefer. And the reverse is also true.
NASA is currently following my preferences, so I understand your frustration. The only consolation I can offer is that landing humans on Mars does not guarantee contamination (and robots on Mars are a risk too). If there is extant life on Mars, it will be different enough to tell it apart from Earth microbes. And past life (fossils, etc.) cannot be destroyed by Earth contamination.
I am fine with your preference being "I don't give a shit, I find it cool to send humans there".
But you seem to say "this is just the beginning of space exploration, and it will bring massive benefits to humanity", to which I answer: you should probably read about it first.
> But as I said, this isn't an argument over facts.
That physics doesn't allow us to reach a planet outside our solar system is a fact.
Was the Wright brothers’ first flight useless, or did it teach us lessons that lead to the Concorde and 777?
Was the first automobile so slow and clunky it was useless, or did it lead to the F1 cars of today?
Was Alan Touring’s computer so slow it was useless, or did it lead to this comment being typed on a device that is many orders of magnitude faster and smaller?
Going to Mars will teach us a lot. In the future when we go further it will be useful in ways we can’t imagine today.
> In the future when we go further it will be useful in ways we can’t imagine today.
There. Is. No. Further.
That's my issue with all that. It's pretty basic: check how far the next solar system is (I know you don't: it's 4+ light-years). Check the speeds we get when we send something out of the solar system (e.g. Voyager).
Sending something to the next solar system at speeds orders of magnitudes faster than we reach today (which we can't reach because... orbital mechanics) would take us tens of thousands of years (hundreds of thousands actually, I can't remember and at this point it does not matter).
Unless someone discovers wormholes or a similar revolution in physics, we are not going to another solar system, period. Contaminating Mars is not even helping doing that. It's like hoping that the Wright brothers' work would help discover vaccination.
That is exactly the point.
You simply can’t know what the future holds.
After the Wright brother’s flight do you think people thought we would cross the Atlantic faster than the speed of sound sipping champagne, or go to the moon?
“Impossible”
And so on.
You have no idea what will be possible on the future, but I hope we can get there by learning, not sticking our heads in the sand.
Do actual science. Send robots there, like Curiosity and Perseverance.
And over all: start recognising that there is no point in sending humans to Mars other than "uh uh it's cool we sent someone there and they came back alive".
I have nothing against the fact that it is cool. And I watched Artemis enthusiastically because it is really, really cool. What I hate is when people seem to be so sure that this is "the new age of space exploration" and we will become a "multiplanetary species".
It's trivial to check how far the next star is (more than 4 light-years) and realise that we would need thousands of years to reach it, and there is no Earth there.
Mars is the last stop, and going there doesn't bring us anything. Instead of that, we can do actual science. Did you follow Rosetta, landing on a comet? Because this is not only super cool, but also real science. But nobody gives a shit about that, because we want humans in space for some reason.
I disagree. Look at how many people work in robotics versus how many people are astronauts...
Do you really think that the job is completely different for workers between building a rocket sending a robot and building a rocket sending humans? Do you think that it was easy to send Curiosity or Rosetta, and that the employees found it boring?
Humans should be a multi planetary species so we want these brave astronauts to do the exploration first for us. What they learn helps us makes the process better.
Human missions drive public interest and funding. A human putting a country's flag is 1000 time better than a rover putting a country's flag.
Humans won't be a multi planetary species. The next star is Proxima Centauri, 4.25 light-years away. We would need tens of thousands of years to reach it. Let's say we make drastic improvements and can reach it in hundreds of years (which is probably impossible without new physics)? That is just the next star, where there is no Earth.
What does that mean? Even if I'm being waaaay too optimistic about our speed, reaching the next star (only the next, again) means that we need to be able to live in space for generations.
First, we cannot even imagine how to do it (life support to reach Mars is already a fundamental problem).
Second, who would want to sacrifice their life to reach nowhere? You're 40, you're trained as an astronaut, and now I tell you that you will live the rest of your life in a spaceship, and you will die long before you have a chance to know if someone will be alive when the spaceship reaches that solar system (if it does).
Third, once you reach that solar system, you need to land on a planet. Either completely autonomously or with pilots who were born in a spaceship and somehow had to be trained by their parents who were trained by their grandparents etc. It's becoming a joke.
Fourth, if someone lands there, they still cannot survive outside of their spaceship (again, there is no Earth in the next solar system). At this point it is preposterous.
And Fifth, in case it was not enough: we're currently failing to survive on Earth, chances are that our society will have collapsed in a lot less than 100 years, and in fact most species are measurably collapsing right now (we are living in a mass extinction that is happening orders of magnitudes faster than the one that killed the dinosaurs, and this is without the help of climate change. Climate change is just added bonus. And the end of fossil fuels as well). So why the hell would we care if someone survives the trip to another star in hundreds (more likely thousands) of years, when billions are set to die in the next decades because of our failure to survive on Earth?
Not only it's probably impossible, but it is ridiculously useless. Better watch a good sci-fi movie.
What I find confusing is how one can be a "space exploration enthusiast" and not realise how far the next star is? Shouldn't "being an enthusiast" imply getting informed, too?
> A human putting a country's flag is 1000 time better than a rover putting a country's flag.
Not only is it more ridiculous, but the first step then would be to find a way to survive in complete autonomy in an environment that has no breathable air. No need to build rockets for that, we can put a box in the ocean and try to get people to live there in similar conditions until we get life support working.
Landing on Mars is the artifact of all of the innovation required to get to Mars. We benefit from the innovations, not the landing per se.
Memory foam, smart phone cameras, tech miniaturization in general, GPS, baby formula, cordless tools... just a tiny sliver of things we use daily that are directly attributable to the pursuit of space travel.
I fully support humans landing on Mars and large budgets but I don't think anything gets exaggerated in these discussions quite like the commercial technology ROI of space programs.
I totally agree. If the only reason to land on Mars were the derivative technologies, I would push for just working on those technologies directly.
And the public is not fooled. Whatever benefits they got from Apollo (Tang? Zero-G pens?) were not worth the cost. But no matter how long the USA lasts, it will always be remembered as the country that landed humans on the moon.
There may have been life on Mars. The day a human lands there, it will contaminate it. If we find traces of life after a human has landed there, we will never know if we brought it there or not.
Systems like these made sense in the pre-AI era, where things needed to be organized at the outset to be useful later.
With AI, there's nothing stopping you from dumping a huge pile of information into a single folder and telling an AI what you want to make with it that day.
Actually AI also benefits from thins being organized.
I find Skills to be Zettlekasten inspired or wiki inspired in that sense.
Zettlekast has other benefits for humans though.
If your goal is to grasp lot of knowladge oyu need to do it in atomic way, connect mentally to what you already know and do spaced repetition to internalize.
Zettlkeaste forces you do it it all as part of organizing. Basically by organizing you make it your own.
Yes AI can help today but it also means it does not stay in your head.
Not sure its important if it is in your head or you can call AI at any moment instead of your own memory.
No. But it also can automate some of the tedium away. Maybe there's some level of organic linking that you do, but it can also go through and be more thorough. I guess it depends on where you derive the value - if you want to be the one discovering the connections and making them, then obviously less so.
Except that note-taking systems are meant to help you organize your own mind and understand the world better. Offloading tasks to AI won't help you with that.
If your implication is that stencil art does not take effort then perhaps you may not fully appreciate Banksy. Works like Gaza Kitty or Flower Thrower don’t just appear haphazardly without effort.
That's entirely app-level issue; the frameworks and the system itself is perfectly capable of handling this. [1]
It's just that for _most_ cases it's perfectly fine to make the users wait until the animations is finished, and handling users tapping multiple things in a quick succession can get annoying and unwieldy.
There are some apps when it's infuriating though, especially when they're quadruply badly engineered and _tie the internal logic state_ to the UI state.
As someone living in a country where I don't speak the local language, I swear at Google Translate engineers daily because I do a "swap the active pair of languages and then quickly launch the camera mode" combo _very_ frequently, and the selected pair of languages isn't actually updated _until the animation finishes_.
It's maddening. [2]
[1]: A quick demo: tap an app on a Springboard to open it, and very quickly swipe up from the bottom to hide it. You'll absolutely be able to interrupt the animation of it launching.
[2]: I'm actually sorta guessing that this is a workaround for a different bug they had; when if you tapped this quickly enough a couple of times you could end up in a situation where the UI displayed a different pair of languages than the internal logic had, so they added that delay, but who knows, maybe I'm theorycrafting too much.
The -only- time I experience it infuriatingly is in iOS natively.
For example: on the Home Screen, open a folder, then tap outside it to bring back the Home Screen. While the animation is happening, try opening an app. It won't.
Open the camera app. Swipe between modes and press the shutter button. It won't work until the animation completes.
An especially egregious one: open messages. Tap the + sign, and tap the letter P while it's animating. I had to tap the letter 10 times before it finally started showing Ps.
I wasn’t claiming that Apple apps are immune to this, or even noticeably better — just that this is very much not a OS-level limitation, and something that _can_ be accomplished.
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