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I use Astra 6 Extra High for everything.

It’s overkill most of the time, but frankly all these models are “cheap”, and I’d rather waste compute than brain cycles trying to discern which dials are best for each individual as-hoc query.

How are they cheap? Does your organization offer unlimited spend, or does your subscription not run into the same limits as mine?
Maybe if you have subsidized 200/500 dollars subscription it may look that way.
But Astra is simply bad at writing. I have to use Argon to rewrite everything Astra wrote in an academic setting. Astra always tries to cover every small detail and engages in defensive writing that is unreadable.
Totally agree. I'm working a lot faster when being just about everything I want on the first hop, without model switching and goofing around to find the sweet spot. When I need a janky answer I run a model locally with llama.cpp