Desktop agent turns a simple explorer-link request into a ~13-minute research flow

Summary

A simple request for a Solscan token/holders link took approximately 13 minutes because the desktop agent continued deep research after the direct answer was already known.

What happened

1. The user asked to check the top holders of a known Solana token.
2. The agent verified the official mint address.
3. Solscan's UI and public API presented Cloudflare/rate-limit barriers.
4. Instead of immediately returning the deterministic token URL, the agent launched multiple fallbacks: web searches, RPC calls, holder/address classification, calculations, and parallel sub-agent checks.
5. The user ultimately had to narrow the request to: “just give me a link.”

The useful final answer was only:

https://solscan.io/token/<mint>#holders

Expected behavior

• Lead with the immediately available result, especially for a simple URL request.
• Bound retries when a website blocks automation.
• Do not let optional verification delay a sufficient answer.
• If deeper verification is useful, return the direct answer first and clearly mark any further work as optional/background.

Actual behavior

The agent over-expanded the task and delayed a seconds-level answer to roughly 13 minutes.

Environment

• Codex in the ChatGPT desktop app
• macOS
• Observed: 2026-08-10
• No private wallet, account, or project data included in this report.