claude-memory/graph/decisions/issue-worker-model-sonnet-over-opus-for-cost-efficient-auton-6ce205.md

id	type	title	tags	importance	confidence	created	updated	relations
6ce2055a-b51b-45e4-8ff0-d34b385f7552	decision	Issue-Worker Model: Sonnet over Opus for Cost-Efficient Autonomous PRs	claude-scheduled issue-worker model-selection cost decision sonnet	0.5	0.8	2026-03-02T20:05:15.162290+00:00	2026-03-02T20:20:08.207657+00:00	target type direction strength edge_id b27fb831-811e-4103-b5f1-3c36d5b1ad20 RELATED_TO outgoing 0.87 de53c517-67c1-45f2-9e3b-16e9312d415b target type direction strength edge_id 73646e80-a640-4316-b7c6-54a4330f1b28 RELATED_TO outgoing 0.82 d617f49c-edb6-4a52-b381-300140c7b9e6 target type direction strength edge_id 33fa68ae-a606-4c4b-b444-356185d62722 RELATED_TO outgoing 0.8 4581b5dd-9d0c-496e-a51b-1b0325f62f03 target type direction strength edge_id 4321bee8-105e-4fc8-b645-964d1234c966 RELATED_TO outgoing 0.8 3fcb9055-625b-428d-b15d-c74fc707ba2a target type direction strength edge_id 45c21973-7fae-4cf7-b247-b40a757d54b0 RELATED_TO incoming 0.7 6f390811-ecf9-4a2a-a28c-849d585fe9a6

Model Selection: Sonnet for issue-worker

Decision

Use Sonnet (not Opus) for the autonomous issue-worker agent.

Rationale

• Sonnet: ~$0.40-0.80/issue vs Opus: ~$2-4/issue
• The $2 budget ceiling is sized for Sonnet
• Multiple safety nets exist (tests, PR review by Cal, agent can skip)
• Single-issue focused bug fixes are Sonnet's strength

How to Change

One-line edit in settings.json to switch models. Revisit after reviewing PR quality over first week.

Trade-off

Lower cost enables running on more issues; Opus reserved for tasks requiring deeper reasoning.