OP here -- I think the general principle I would recommend is using a big reasoning model for the planning phase. I think Claude Code and other agents do the same. The reason this is important is because the quality of the plan really affects the final result, and error rates will compound if the plan isn't good.

based on the article, it seems like a good reasoning model like gpt5 or opus 4.1 might be good choices for the planner. I wonder if the gpt oss reasoning models would do well