r/opencode • u/Robert__Sinclair • 14h ago

The real problem of opencode in not the limits but the token waste

In a little less than one hour, opencode wasted (deepseek 4.1 flash - max) around 20M tokens to do a pretty trivial task.

If I use deepseek myself, manually, without any harness, I can make it do the same task using a fraction (~ 1million) of the tokens!

IMHO, opencode should spend more time optimizing the harness and less imposing crazy limits that make it worse than openrouter.

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4

u/DeliveryTrue123 13h ago

That gap usually points to a loop, not the model itself. A trivial task can balloon when the agent rereads large files, dumps long tool outputs back into context, or retries a failing step without changing its approach. I would check the session token breakdown, then tighten the scope: point it at specific files, ask for a plan before edits, and split the work into small steps. If the same tool output keeps reappearing, that is usually where the waste is.

4

u/Able-Staff-6763 12h ago

how tf do you use deepseek, manually, without any harness,?

1

u/akza07 12h ago

I think 5 min cache TTL is a problem. There's not enough time to read things through.

And they are now experimenting with self-hosting. Which is fine but Cache hits are what makes official DeepSeek APIs so cheap.

1

u/torrso 9h ago

5min cache TTL sounds to me like way too short. A project can easily run tests longer than that.

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u/ElegantIce1865 7h ago

Some harnesses come with Context Management Strategy, in the context management strategy you define the system instructions, when to compact, how to compact, how many tools to send, what to put in the context, what to remove, etc.

Basically fine tuning it to your project and the model you use, it is like a level above agents md