One thing I’m still trying to reason about with Codex is when a run should be stopped rather than allowed to keep spending context, steps, and time.
Some failures are obvious: repeated test failures, the same edit being attempted multiple times, or the agent circling around the same error message.
But the harder cases are more subtle:
A run looks like it is making progress, but the diff keeps growing in the wrong direction.
It keeps adding abstractions instead of fixing the actual issue.
It repeatedly re-reads files without changing its plan.
It burns a lot of time on environment setup instead of the task itself.
For people using Codex regularly, do you set a manual cutoff after a certain number of failed attempts, time elapsed, or repeated behavior?
Or do you usually let the run finish and inspect the result afterward?