It seems many have built similar tools for solving this.

Mine lets me run Claude and Codex (and pi but then you have to pay API rates) from the same localhosted webserver, and also schedule feature implementations to always hit the weekly usage cap. chats logs in jsonl (used by both) are saved per project in a never-pushed git branch. All agents run in Podman containers.

I am just starting to play with a higher-level agent that just pushes the repo in a direction based on the human answering a thorough list of clarification questions.

These have been really useful

- Encourage short, commit-linked chats, to avoid the expensive cache writes.

- Plot of LOC over time. Use better models until this starts not spiking a ton with every new feature.

- Terminals kinda suck for agentic stuff IMO and we should stop cramming agent loops into them. Minimalism doesn't really help here, it's really nice to have built-in STT, real buttons, easy scrolling, etc etc etc.

- The minimal delta is a commit. Every implementation turn must end with one or multiple, and a clean worktree.

- Crystal clear, extremely granular usage data. This is something Claude Code and Codex will never give you, instead you get dark patterns nudging you to forget about the spend, while changing plan quotas every couple weeks.