Using Codex (or Code) for the Orchestrator Instead of Claude

I spent all day trying to develop a loop/harness for creating images with Nano Banana Pro. While I got decent results with Claude executing all steps, judges, and the orchestrator, Claude kept skipping instructions and making too many assumptions.

I had judges for every step and eventually instructed the orchestrator to spin up subagents for each judge to get an arm's-length feedback loop. Despite that, the orchestrator would still sometimes skip judges or ignore their feedback.

I then tried running the same workflow with Codex (using Codex for the steps, judges, and orchestrator) and got much closer to the desired results, but it's like waiting for paint to dry.

No matter how hard I tried, Claude (Opus) kept jumping out of the harness. Anyone else having the same experience with v2.1.2? Any improvement suggestions?