Not sure how Claude and CC has become the defacto best model given gpt 5.3 codex and 5.4 exist. This space moves so fast you should be testing your workflows on different models at least once every quarter, prudently once a month.
The rest of the organisation, which is not software development or IT related, mainly uses GPT models. I just wish I hadn't taught risk management about claude code so they weren't wasting MY tokens.
Obviously in hindsight it would be unfair to Anthropic to judge them on an unstable day so I'l leave those complaints aside but I hit the session limit way too fast. I planned out 3 tasks and it couldn't finish the first plan completely, for that implementation task it has seen a grand total of 1 build log and hasn't even run any tests which already caused it to enter in the red territory of the context circle.
It was even asking me during planning which endpoints the new feature should use to hook into the existing system, codex would never ask this and just simply look these up during planning and whenever it encounters ambiguity it would either ask straight away or put it as an open question. I have to wonder if they're limiting this behavior due trying to keep the context as small as possible and preventing even earlier session limits.
Maybe codex's limits are not sustainable in the long run and I'm very spoiled by the limits but at this point CC(sonnet) and Codex(5.4) are simply not in the same league when comparing both 20 dollar subscriptions.
I will also clearly state that the value both these tools provide at these price points are absolutely worth it, it's just that codex's value/money ratio is much better.
CC is a better implementation and seems to be fairly economic with token usage. That is the really the only defining point and, I suspect, Anthropic are going to have a lot of trouble staying relevant with all the product issues.
They were far ahead for a brief period in November/December which is driving the hype cycle that now appears to be collapsing the company.
You have to test at least every month, things are moving quickly. Stepfun is releasing soon and seems to have an Opus-level model with more efficient architecture.
One example is I have a multi-stage distillation/knowledge extraction script for taking a Discord channel and answering questions. I have a hardcoded 5k message test set where I set up 20 questions myself based on analyzing it.
In my harness Minimax wasn't even getting half of them right, whereas Sonnet was 100%. Granted this isn't code, but my usage on pi felt about the same.
What are you using to drive the Chinese models in order to evaluate this? OpenCode?
Some of Claude Code's features, like remote sessions, are far more important than the underlying model for my productivity.
CC tool usage is also significantly ahead imo (doesn't negate the price but it is something). I have seen issues with heavy thinking models (like Minimax) and client implementations with poor tool usage (like Cline).
CC has had a period over the last six months of delivering significant value...but, of course, you can just use CC with OpenRouter.
I keep coming back to it because I can run it as a manager for the smaller tasks.
Agentic workflows do have a place in well-defined, structured tasks...but I don't think that is what most people are trying to do with it.