I've had similar thoughts lately while using agents for coding. It seems like if I give the agents external tools and sources of truth they perform really well. In my case it was a lot of standards, extensive use of Rust language features (e.g. traits), formal methods tools, large-scale architecture and specification documents (accessed via a special tool I also wrote), and using the beads_rust tool for tracking session state and giving the agent a list of issues to work. I hadn't thought of this as 'backpressure' but I really like that framing. It gives the agents guardrails and context and external validity that it can't make up.
This is pretty much my approach. I started with some spec files for a project I'm working on right now, based on some academic papers I've written. I ended up going back and forth with Claude, building plans, pushing info back into the specs, expanding that out and I ended up with multiple spec/architecture/module documents. I got to the point where I ended up building my own system (using claude) to capture and generate artifacts, in more of a systems engineering style (e.g. following IEEE standards for conops, requirement documents, software definitions, test plans...). I don't use that for session-level planning; Claude's tools work fine for that. (I like superpowers, so far. It hasn't seemed too much)
I have found it to work very well with Claude by giving it context and guardrails. Basically I just tell it "follow the guidance docs" and it does. Couple that with intense testing and self-feedback mechanisms and you can easily keep Claude on track.
I have had the same experience with Codex and Claude as you in terms of token usage. But I haven't been happy with my Codex usage; Claude just feels like it's doing more of what I want in the way I want.
People interested in similar experiences should check out this podcast/series of videos where two Windows/Mac users try desktop Linux and report out on their experiences.
I also use gonic over navidrome (and formerly airsonic) because Navidrome doesn't support folder view (and apparently never will). As nice as Navidrome is, that's a dealbreaker for me. Gonic works great though.
That's wild, I was in LA recently for work and drove by that area and wondered what was up with the street grid. I figured it must be something like this given the airport.