4 ms·

GPT-5.6 Sol, along with Terra and Luna, will launch publicly this Thursday

235 points by jfrbfbreudh 3mo ago

ray__ 3mo ago
Any previewers have hot takes? I've really preferred gpt-5.5 over Opus 4.8 for data analysis and scientific software work. It seems much more reliable. Fable is unusable for the type of work that I do (due to guardrails). Really looking forward to trying these new OpenAI models out.
- ottoboney 3mo ago
  It seems comparable to Fable to me in my uses.
  - wahnfrieden 3mo ago
    That's great to hear - and for the same price as 5.5, and reportedly with much lower token use per task. Were you able to try Sol Ultra?
    - ottoboney 3mo ago
      No, my organization limits access to xhigh.
  - scottmf 3mo ago
    What types of use cases?
- CjHuber 3mo ago
  Interesting to hear people like gpt-5.5. For me it feels smart only at one shot prompts, but if you try to build up session context before doing something it feels magnitudes inferior to Claude. I'm almost sure its because the thinking of previous turns is stripped with the responses API, so if I tell it to analyse something deeply, what remains of the understanding in future turns is only the short response text of that analysis
  - porker 3mo ago
    For gpt-5.5 I build up that session context into a markdown file, and then I start a new session and give it the markdown file with the instructions for what to do. I'm guessing this works better because it can always go back and re-analyze the saved context.
  - throwuxiytayq 3mo ago
    > thinking of previous turns is stripped with the responses API Why do they store an encrypted reasoning payload in the session file and pass it to the API? Just a ruse? Reasoning isn’t even that many tokens, you think they’d degrade their model quality like that? Reasoning messages would be lost immediately after a single tool call, unless you mean they sometimes go back and strip the reasoning channel retroactively, but that would increase costs via cache invalidation. I just don’t see any way it would make sense for them to do. And wouldn’t this be noticeable by reasoning tokens not being accounted for in the context window usage?
  - prodigycorp 3mo ago
    Do you have a source for this? I'm pretty sure responses api is only there to obfuscate reasoning, but that they're still keeping reasoning traces in the backend.
    - wahnfrieden 3mo ago
      [flagged]
      - CjHuber 3mo ago
        Well, obviously its true as you can see in the silbing comment. But still interesting how experiences differ. I wonder did you ever use codex in more demanding workflows, because that at least something like that is going on is obvious if you use it for a few hours
      - satvikpendem 3mo ago
        Looks like you're wrong, if you look at the sibling
- pavpanchekha 3mo ago
  For compiler work I found that Sol is noticably better than 5.5 (and I generally use OAI models because I like the Codex app), but Fable was still obviously better.
  - cbg0 3mo ago
    Better in what way? Does it follow the goals better, does the code produce have higher quality in a testable/maintainable sense or is it just closer to how you would usually program something?
- petesergeant 3mo ago
  Interesting, data analysis work is the only thing I’ll use Gemini for
- deleted 3mo ago
  [deleted]
- hodgehog11 3mo ago
  I'm sorry to hear you are unable to use Fable; my partner is in the same boat and it frustrates her immensely to see what I've been able to do with it. As someone who is working with developing new linear algebra routines, Fable is so far ahead of GPT-5.5 and Opus that it's obscene. Massively better insights and far better at handling delicate corner cases without needing to mention them. I would be stunned if GPT-5.6 is at that level, but one can hope.
aarvin_roshin 3mo ago
Thoughts[^0] from Theo, who had early access: > It's a damn good model. Not quite as "smart" as Fable, but it is incredibly capable. Fixed all the problems I had with GPT-5.5. > It is incredibly determined. Will run for a day without even using a /goal. It understands subagents incredibly well and is great at orchestrating. It's super pleasant in use cases like OpenClaw and Hermes Agent. It knows iOS dev incredibly well. > It has rough edges too, but FAR fewer than 5.5 did. > For many things, gpt-5.6-sol will become my obvious defaults. > It is better about [following instructions] than 5.5 was. Understands intent well and hammers until it gets there. Sometimes a bit too hard. Also[^1]: > gpt-5.6-sol is world leading in computer use. It made me use it 100x more. When we lost access to 5.6, I quickly started to go insane without it [^0]: https://nitter.net/theo/status/2074708892341481755 https://nitter.net/theo/status/2074708892341481755 [^1]: https://nitter.net/theo/status/2074720467395756499 https://nitter.net/theo/status/2074720467395756499
- isoprophlex 3mo ago
  Increased tenacity & goal following is exactly what I want in this model, to make it compete with Claude models. (A little toning down of the goblin fetish would be nice too, haha.)
- bashtoni 3mo ago
  I feel like listening to Theo about anything technical is like consulting a Labrador retriever for advice on quantum physics. Every time I've ever seen one of his videos it's pretty clear he has very little understanding of development or engineering. I first became aware of him from his early "unit tests are a waste of time" stuff, and it seems his skillset is building a personal brand. Fair play, he's clearly talented at that, but that doesn't make his opinion on anything else worthwhile.
  - ttoinou 3mo ago
    There is a whole religion about tests that is worth attacking though
    - 3mo ago
reassess_blind 3mo ago
I’m bouncing back between Codex and Claude like a ping-pong ball. I much prefer the experience using Codex, less verbose and to-the-point I’ve found. But Fable, being as strong as it is, is a big draw for Claude right now. I’ll likely switch back to Codex if 5.6 Sol is comparable.
- avereveard 3mo ago
  Same. For some reason late opus model are very superficial doing ux work and so am using gpt for that, but backend is much better engineered by claude, gpt prefer to duplicate everything it needs on the spot causing class sprawl
  - bredren 3mo ago
    How are y'all carrying context history from one agent to the other? I also flip between the models due to quota, TUI enhancements, model updates and service availability. To handle this, I built a thing that normalizes your transcripts between Claude Code and Codex into a shared DB, then a CLI and skill. It has made it so it doesn't matter what I built where (or when) I just refer to the work and drop in a /total-recall (or $total-recall on codex) and the agent brings it into the current convo. I realize there are a lot of ~memory tools out there, but I think particular my approach and product behavior is unique. If you're open to giving it a try, I'd appreciate any feedback: https://contextify.sh https://contextify.sh recent show hn: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48777790 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48777790
    - nberkman 3mo ago
      Sounds similar to the tool I built: https://github.com/neilberkman/ccrider#ccrider https://github.com/neilberkman/ccrider#ccrider (although it's OSS whereas yours appears to be commercial)
    - mptest 3mo ago
      > how are yall carrying context... Personally I just , in the orchestration loop, have all decisions be constantly reviewed and deliberated on and the decisions logged in a permanent way, that way everything is auditable, the model if needed can go back and look at why x or why decision was made or x or y tool used, and they're all labeled as D-1234 or whatever. Plus I have it log the council discussions and always include provenance or the opinions so fable can go back after every major implementation and review how the orchestration loop could be improved. Basically have it log as much thinking in an organized compartmentalized way is better than any memory feature I've found though I haven't tried many. Auditable logs for every major decision, use 5.5 with reckless abandon (still have 3 resets myself). Not claiming this is perfect but it has led to a very easy time of any fresh agent picking up the project. I also keep a task queue and project status and agent playbook that also get refined based off the logs of how a run went
laurels-marts 3mo ago
Damn this is exciting. I love that gpt models are much faster, efficient and cheaper than Claude models. They are so fast even on high/xhigh that I don’t find myself using the parallel agent setup anymore much since its cognitively less demanding to just follow along what the model is doing and most tasks it will complete in <5-<10mins anyway.
- jychang 3mo ago
  This is because GPT-5.6 is just a more posttrained version of GPT-5.5, not a bigger model than GPT-5.5. It's not like how Mythos is bigger than Opus. GPT-5.6 --------> GPT-5.6 Sol GPT-5.6-mini ---> GPT-5.6 Terra GPT-5.6-nano ---> GPT-5.6 Luna Two important things to note, if you want to verify what I say/correct me: GPT-5.6 Terra actually scores worse than GPT-5.5 on many benchmarks. It's not GPT-5.5 trained with more compute; it's basically GPT-5.6-mini that's been distilled from GPT-5.6 full size. Remember, GPT-5.4-mini had almost the same benchmarks as GPT-5.2 after all. Opus 4.8 runs at ~90 tokens per second. Fable 5 runs at ~40 tokens per second on from Anthropic, because it's a bigger/slower model. A few days after the release, when the dust dies down, look at how many tokens/second GPT-5.6 Sol is running at. I will bet it's the about same as GPT-5.5, and not half the speed. (OpenAI is not incentivized to slow down the model for paying customers). But the model tokens/sec will be a big clue- if OpenAI is charging more money for the same sized model or not.
  - sk4rekr0w 3mo ago
    bigger doesn't mean better, chill out
    - mnicky 3mo ago
      That's true but size of LLMs has been strongly correlated with their "intelligence".
      - cyanydeez 3mo ago
        not just that, but the entire industry spend several years seeking investment on the "pure" idea that they just need more compute and more parameters to reach AGI. And the "business" obvious is still doing that but the science and implementation has be realizing that this just isn't true. They're not getting AGI out of a single LLM by itself.
aarvin_roshin 3mo ago
I'm most curious about whether OpenAI finally taught its models how to design interfaces. They have been behind the other labs in this area for what feels like ages.
- MrBuddyCasino 3mo ago
  What do you feel is the best model for interface design right now?
  - Dibes 3mo ago
    For me claude is the best, hands down. Fable took it a step even further.
    - mchusma 3mo ago
      I agree. Gemini actually is pretty good for isolated components too. But fable is much better at design than opus or gpt5.5. I have not seen as much difference elsewhere, but definitely design fable is great.
- dannyw 3mo ago
  Yes. I'm really happy with frontend design of Sol (and it does scale down well to Terra!). Definitely a step change on design.
jorisw 3mo ago
Mirror: https://xcancel.com/OpenAI/status/2074704958419792299 https://xcancel.com/OpenAI/status/2074704958419792299
mhrmsn 3mo ago
Is this the reason Anthropic extended use of Fable 5 via subscriptions until July 12? Seems a bit like it
- matheusmoreira 3mo ago
  Probably, but I think it's too little too late. Not much point to it if it's not permanent. The "get the most out of Fable until it goes away" frenzy is getting old fast. The cybersecurity blocks are very obnoxious too. If OpenAI can launch a Fable tier model that's actually usable on a subscription, then Anthropic is just going to lose, and badly.
  - mhrmsn 3mo ago
    Agreed, this is one of the things I'm very surprised - one would think that a product like this is managed more consistently, but every few days there is another announcement or change in what the subscription can and can't do and to what extent. Same also for the announced changes around `claude -p` and Agent SDK use that were backtracked
    - satvikpendem 3mo ago
      It's because Anthropic doesn't have capacity while OpenAI does. People clowned Altman a couple years ago because of the massive data center build out commitments but that has proved to be quite prescient. It is why Codex has much higher, almost unlimited limits, while Claude Code rate limits hourly and weekly much more.
yzydserd 3mo ago
The question is, launch to who …
- Tiberium 3mo ago
  To everyone.
  - steve-atx-7600 3mo ago
    "We’re expanding preview access globally now." Preview access? Not as straightforward as "launching on thursday".
    - tedsanders 3mo ago
      I believe what the post meant to communicate is: - alpha testers will start getting access now - everyone will get access Thursday (barring banned countries / individuals) Historically, some companies and individuals have gotten alpha access before public launches, to give feedback and adapt their products to the new models. With GPT-5.6, some folks had early alpha access, but this was paused while the model was being evaluated and approved. Now, alpha access will be enabled for partners in the next two days before our wider launch. (I work at OpenAI.)
simianwords 3mo ago
I find codex way more usable. It’s not pretentiously verbose like Claude. It’s also responsive - I can see the progress easily and steer the conversation. With Claude, it might take 15 minutes and I would lose patience.
- lillecarl 3mo ago
  I held out on OpenAI until last month because I despise Sam Altman, but using Codex is a great experience and 5.5 (medium) I'm on 20$ is very capable, follows instructions when it should and confronts me/challenges me when it should. UX is nicer where the agent is somehow "separated" from execution.
- gck1 3mo ago
  Both are verbose in their own way, and both - terrible. Claude models love to throw huge blobs of text in architecture planning / interview conversations, but in not a mentally draining language. OpenAI models are more compact, but very dense & formal - they will speak in RFC language for a button that clicks and submits a form. So claude: 10 paragraphs of prose codex: 1 paragraph of jargon over jargon.
  - cbg0 3mo ago
    I've seen this with GPT, and I usually ask it to put together a more easy to understand document for a specific target audience or reading level and it seems to do okay.
matheusmoreira 3mo ago
Will it be available on subscription tiers? That will get me to switch away from Anthropic.
minimaxir 3mo ago
...so is it a good idea to use up all my Codex quota by Thursday in the hopes of a reset to promote GPT 5.6?
SkiFire13 3mo ago
Honestly they sound like pokemon game names.
- embedding-shape 3mo ago
  Probably some Pokemon names might be inspired by planet names in Latin, yes.
bottlepalm 3mo ago
Coding with AI it feels like if you're not using the best model then you're possibly missing out - creating less capable, maintainable, just plain 'good' code. Why waste time using anything less than the best and cleaning up the mess later on. This is why I feel like local models and Chinese models aren't taking off (and Gemini/Grok) - they work, but they're plain just not as good as OpenAI/Anthropic. If you have the money then it doesn't make sense to code with anything else.
- TheCoreh 3mo ago
  There are diminishing returns, especially for more mundane tasks. Fable is nice, and I bet Sol is also nice. But there really isn't much of a difference right now when using something beyond Opus or presumably Terra for most things. They're most useful when doing greenfield, highly complex/novel tasks. When Open Source catches up, it will be more widely adopted.
  - bottlepalm 3mo ago
    Yea, but by the time open source catches up, the frontier will be that much more capable and you won't want to waste time babysitting less capable models. Another dimension for the fronteir to move in is speed. Codex has /fast which is great, but yea the bottleneck right now in many cases is just the time it takes these tools to complete tasks. I'm running many sessions in parallel just because I'm waiting for tasks to finish. I'm constantly round robin'ing them, and kicking them off on the next 20 minute task. If these models were faster I wouldn't need to context switch as much.
- Philip-J-Fry 3mo ago
  That depends entirely on how you're using AI. If you're getting it to do all the hard thinking, then sure using the best model is probably always going to be better. But it's also going to be expensive. Using cheaper models and using your skills and expertise from the pre-AI era can get you working just as fast. You've gotta be more specific about the work you need doing. It's less "vibes" based, but they're still effective. Also, Chinese models absolutely are taking off. I used Claude and GPT at work, and then I tried using some Chinese models for personal projects. I am 100% convinced they're like 90% as good for 10% of the cost. But you've basically gotta be a good developer first and know what you want and know when it's giving you shit.
simianwords 3mo ago
Earlier I predicted that Fable and Sol would be of similar capability, I think I will be wrong. Here is why: there is no indication that there are any classifiers like in Fable. I think OpenAI found out how to lobotomise the model without classifiers but the tradeoff is that it is a weaker model. I wonder how people feel about that. Would you like a highly intelligent jagged model with classifiers or slightly less intelligent smooth model without classifiers?
- user43928 3mo ago
  Based on the pricing I guess GPT 5.6 is the same size as GPT 5.5. I would not be surprised if it is not as intelligent as the Mythos class models. I have seen rumors that GPT 6 may release before September. The same person also claimed that a Fable 5.1 checkpoint has been completed a few weeks ago.
elAhmo 3mo ago
I know a few of my comments are related to this, but these new names are horrible. Why introduce ANOTHER layer of confusion and drop the mini, nano suffixes that people got used to? How does this go through so many layers of management at a trillion dollar company without who has a say raising this? I simply can't believe how stupid the naming scheme from OpenAI was and continues to be even after they acknowledged it earlier.
- manojlds 3mo ago
  Because they want a Haiku, Sonnet, Opus equivalent I guess?
  - trentor 3mo ago
    The funny thing is they had the decision to go with some less or more pretentious...
  - solids 3mo ago
    Exactly, and I think the tipping point was how many times “Fable” was mentioned the last weeks
    - re-thc 3mo ago
      Then they should have just called it Fairytale
      - adammarples 3mo ago
        Confabulation
        Yizahi 3mo ago
        Perchance
        gkbrk 3mo ago
bob1029 3mo ago
I've been running a custom enterprise agent on 5.4 and it's been very good so far. I am looking forward to trying it with the monster model to see if we can approach some additional business cases. I think if you are not seeing reasonable performance in your agent loops as of 5.5, it's likely there is a deficit with how the loop, prompt or tools interact with the environment.
linzhangrun 3mo ago
Will it be restricted as heavily as Fable? Will it come to CodeX? My quota is about to reset. Really can’t wait to use it.
cbg0 3mo ago
[dead]
egorfine 3mo ago
But only for a small percentage of world's population, right?
returnInfinity 3mo ago
I think GPT 5.6 sol is pretty slow. I went back to 5.5 Though its been just 3 days I started using. Half way through the chat, GPT 5.6 Sol stops and does a safety verification, pretty annoying
Marudhu09 3mo ago
Waiting.....
lizardking 3mo ago
Sharing names with cryptocurrencies from four-ish years ago, the hype cycle is nearly complete.
small_model 3mo ago
Fable 5 for the planning, thinking, reasoning part, then GPT 5.5 to implement is an almost perfect combo, with Fable then reviewing GPT's code. Codex CLI just seems faster at coding than Claude Code but Fable is just a level above intelligence wise, it's truly like taking to very very very smart human. With GPT 5.6 though will be interesting to see if things flip, to have Codex speed (or faster) with Fable level intelligence is a game changer.
throwitaway222 3mo ago
It's unclear to me if I as a $20/mo codex user will get this, and what TPS.
thomas_witt 3mo ago
I would be really interested in real life throughput. For an agentic chat situation, we are still on 5.4 - not because of the cost, but it's simply much faster than 5.5 with comparable results. Also we are using gpt-5.4-mini a lot for quick summaries, tldrs etc. In an ideal world we would upgrade 5.4 to 5.6 terra and 5.4 mini to 5.4 luna. But does somebody already have some measurements at least in terms of speed?

235 points by jfrbfbreudh 3mo ago

ray__ 3mo ago

Any previewers have hot takes? I've really preferred gpt-5.5 over Opus 4.8 for data analysis and scientific software work. It seems much more reliable. Fable is unusable for the type of work that I do (due to guardrails). Really looking forward to trying these new OpenAI models out.

ottoboney 3mo ago
It seems comparable to Fable to me in my uses.
- wahnfrieden 3mo ago
  That's great to hear - and for the same price as 5.5, and reportedly with much lower token use per task. Were you able to try Sol Ultra?
  - ottoboney 3mo ago
    No, my organization limits access to xhigh.
- scottmf 3mo ago
  What types of use cases?
CjHuber 3mo ago
Interesting to hear people like gpt-5.5. For me it feels smart only at one shot prompts, but if you try to build up session context before doing something it feels magnitudes inferior to Claude. I'm almost sure its because the thinking of previous turns is stripped with the responses API, so if I tell it to analyse something deeply, what remains of the understanding in future turns is only the short response text of that analysis
- porker 3mo ago
  For gpt-5.5 I build up that session context into a markdown file, and then I start a new session and give it the markdown file with the instructions for what to do. I'm guessing this works better because it can always go back and re-analyze the saved context.
- throwuxiytayq 3mo ago
  > thinking of previous turns is stripped with the responses API Why do they store an encrypted reasoning payload in the session file and pass it to the API? Just a ruse? Reasoning isn’t even that many tokens, you think they’d degrade their model quality like that? Reasoning messages would be lost immediately after a single tool call, unless you mean they sometimes go back and strip the reasoning channel retroactively, but that would increase costs via cache invalidation. I just don’t see any way it would make sense for them to do. And wouldn’t this be noticeable by reasoning tokens not being accounted for in the context window usage?
- prodigycorp 3mo ago
  Do you have a source for this? I'm pretty sure responses api is only there to obfuscate reasoning, but that they're still keeping reasoning traces in the backend.
  - wahnfrieden 3mo ago
    [flagged]
    - CjHuber 3mo ago
      Well, obviously its true as you can see in the silbing comment. But still interesting how experiences differ. I wonder did you ever use codex in more demanding workflows, because that at least something like that is going on is obvious if you use it for a few hours
    - satvikpendem 3mo ago
      Looks like you're wrong, if you look at the sibling
pavpanchekha 3mo ago
For compiler work I found that Sol is noticably better than 5.5 (and I generally use OAI models because I like the Codex app), but Fable was still obviously better.
- cbg0 3mo ago
  Better in what way? Does it follow the goals better, does the code produce have higher quality in a testable/maintainable sense or is it just closer to how you would usually program something?
petesergeant 3mo ago
Interesting, data analysis work is the only thing I’ll use Gemini for
deleted 3mo ago
[deleted]
hodgehog11 3mo ago
I'm sorry to hear you are unable to use Fable; my partner is in the same boat and it frustrates her immensely to see what I've been able to do with it. As someone who is working with developing new linear algebra routines, Fable is so far ahead of GPT-5.5 and Opus that it's obscene. Massively better insights and far better at handling delicate corner cases without needing to mention them. I would be stunned if GPT-5.6 is at that level, but one can hope.

aarvin_roshin 3mo ago

Thoughts[^0] from Theo, who had early access: > It's a damn good model. Not quite as "smart" as Fable, but it is incredibly capable. Fixed all the problems I had with GPT-5.5. > It is incredibly determined. Will run for a day without even using a /goal. It understands subagents incredibly well and is great at orchestrating. It's super pleasant in use cases like OpenClaw and Hermes Agent. It knows iOS dev incredibly well. > It has rough edges too, but FAR fewer than 5.5 did. > For many things, gpt-5.6-sol will become my obvious defaults. > It is better about [following instructions] than 5.5 was. Understands intent well and hammers until it gets there. Sometimes a bit too hard. Also[^1]: > gpt-5.6-sol is world leading in computer use. It made me use it 100x more. When we lost access to 5.6, I quickly started to go insane without it [^0]: https://nitter.net/theo/status/2074708892341481755 https://nitter.net/theo/status/2074708892341481755 [^1]: https://nitter.net/theo/status/2074720467395756499 https://nitter.net/theo/status/2074720467395756499

isoprophlex 3mo ago
Increased tenacity & goal following is exactly what I want in this model, to make it compete with Claude models. (A little toning down of the goblin fetish would be nice too, haha.)
bashtoni 3mo ago
I feel like listening to Theo about anything technical is like consulting a Labrador retriever for advice on quantum physics. Every time I've ever seen one of his videos it's pretty clear he has very little understanding of development or engineering. I first became aware of him from his early "unit tests are a waste of time" stuff, and it seems his skillset is building a personal brand. Fair play, he's clearly talented at that, but that doesn't make his opinion on anything else worthwhile.
- ttoinou 3mo ago
  There is a whole religion about tests that is worth attacking though
  - 3mo ago

reassess_blind 3mo ago

I’m bouncing back between Codex and Claude like a ping-pong ball. I much prefer the experience using Codex, less verbose and to-the-point I’ve found. But Fable, being as strong as it is, is a big draw for Claude right now. I’ll likely switch back to Codex if 5.6 Sol is comparable.

avereveard 3mo ago
Same. For some reason late opus model are very superficial doing ux work and so am using gpt for that, but backend is much better engineered by claude, gpt prefer to duplicate everything it needs on the spot causing class sprawl
- bredren 3mo ago
  How are y'all carrying context history from one agent to the other? I also flip between the models due to quota, TUI enhancements, model updates and service availability. To handle this, I built a thing that normalizes your transcripts between Claude Code and Codex into a shared DB, then a CLI and skill. It has made it so it doesn't matter what I built where (or when) I just refer to the work and drop in a /total-recall (or $total-recall on codex) and the agent brings it into the current convo. I realize there are a lot of ~memory tools out there, but I think particular my approach and product behavior is unique. If you're open to giving it a try, I'd appreciate any feedback: https://contextify.sh https://contextify.sh recent show hn: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48777790 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48777790
  - nberkman 3mo ago
    Sounds similar to the tool I built: https://github.com/neilberkman/ccrider#ccrider https://github.com/neilberkman/ccrider#ccrider (although it's OSS whereas yours appears to be commercial)
  - mptest 3mo ago
    > how are yall carrying context... Personally I just , in the orchestration loop, have all decisions be constantly reviewed and deliberated on and the decisions logged in a permanent way, that way everything is auditable, the model if needed can go back and look at why x or why decision was made or x or y tool used, and they're all labeled as D-1234 or whatever. Plus I have it log the council discussions and always include provenance or the opinions so fable can go back after every major implementation and review how the orchestration loop could be improved. Basically have it log as much thinking in an organized compartmentalized way is better than any memory feature I've found though I haven't tried many. Auditable logs for every major decision, use 5.5 with reckless abandon (still have 3 resets myself). Not claiming this is perfect but it has led to a very easy time of any fresh agent picking up the project. I also keep a task queue and project status and agent playbook that also get refined based off the logs of how a run went

laurels-marts 3mo ago

Damn this is exciting. I love that gpt models are much faster, efficient and cheaper than Claude models. They are so fast even on high/xhigh that I don’t find myself using the parallel agent setup anymore much since its cognitively less demanding to just follow along what the model is doing and most tasks it will complete in <5-<10mins anyway.

jychang 3mo ago
This is because GPT-5.6 is just a more posttrained version of GPT-5.5, not a bigger model than GPT-5.5. It's not like how Mythos is bigger than Opus. GPT-5.6 --------> GPT-5.6 Sol GPT-5.6-mini ---> GPT-5.6 Terra GPT-5.6-nano ---> GPT-5.6 Luna Two important things to note, if you want to verify what I say/correct me: GPT-5.6 Terra actually scores worse than GPT-5.5 on many benchmarks. It's not GPT-5.5 trained with more compute; it's basically GPT-5.6-mini that's been distilled from GPT-5.6 full size. Remember, GPT-5.4-mini had almost the same benchmarks as GPT-5.2 after all. Opus 4.8 runs at ~90 tokens per second. Fable 5 runs at ~40 tokens per second on from Anthropic, because it's a bigger/slower model. A few days after the release, when the dust dies down, look at how many tokens/second GPT-5.6 Sol is running at. I will bet it's the about same as GPT-5.5, and not half the speed. (OpenAI is not incentivized to slow down the model for paying customers). But the model tokens/sec will be a big clue- if OpenAI is charging more money for the same sized model or not.
- sk4rekr0w 3mo ago
  bigger doesn't mean better, chill out
  - mnicky 3mo ago
    That's true but size of LLMs has been strongly correlated with their "intelligence".
    - cyanydeez 3mo ago
      not just that, but the entire industry spend several years seeking investment on the "pure" idea that they just need more compute and more parameters to reach AGI. And the "business" obvious is still doing that but the science and implementation has be realizing that this just isn't true. They're not getting AGI out of a single LLM by itself.

aarvin_roshin 3mo ago

I'm most curious about whether OpenAI finally taught its models how to design interfaces. They have been behind the other labs in this area for what feels like ages.

MrBuddyCasino 3mo ago
What do you feel is the best model for interface design right now?
- Dibes 3mo ago
  For me claude is the best, hands down. Fable took it a step even further.
  - mchusma 3mo ago
    I agree. Gemini actually is pretty good for isolated components too. But fable is much better at design than opus or gpt5.5. I have not seen as much difference elsewhere, but definitely design fable is great.
dannyw 3mo ago
Yes. I'm really happy with frontend design of Sol (and it does scale down well to Terra!). Definitely a step change on design.

jorisw 3mo ago

Mirror: https://xcancel.com/OpenAI/status/2074704958419792299 https://xcancel.com/OpenAI/status/2074704958419792299

mhrmsn 3mo ago

Is this the reason Anthropic extended use of Fable 5 via subscriptions until July 12? Seems a bit like it

matheusmoreira 3mo ago
Probably, but I think it's too little too late. Not much point to it if it's not permanent. The "get the most out of Fable until it goes away" frenzy is getting old fast. The cybersecurity blocks are very obnoxious too. If OpenAI can launch a Fable tier model that's actually usable on a subscription, then Anthropic is just going to lose, and badly.
- mhrmsn 3mo ago
  Agreed, this is one of the things I'm very surprised - one would think that a product like this is managed more consistently, but every few days there is another announcement or change in what the subscription can and can't do and to what extent. Same also for the announced changes around `claude -p` and Agent SDK use that were backtracked
  - satvikpendem 3mo ago
    It's because Anthropic doesn't have capacity while OpenAI does. People clowned Altman a couple years ago because of the massive data center build out commitments but that has proved to be quite prescient. It is why Codex has much higher, almost unlimited limits, while Claude Code rate limits hourly and weekly much more.

yzydserd 3mo ago

The question is, launch to who …

Tiberium 3mo ago
To everyone.
- steve-atx-7600 3mo ago
  "We’re expanding preview access globally now." Preview access? Not as straightforward as "launching on thursday".
  - tedsanders 3mo ago
    I believe what the post meant to communicate is: - alpha testers will start getting access now - everyone will get access Thursday (barring banned countries / individuals) Historically, some companies and individuals have gotten alpha access before public launches, to give feedback and adapt their products to the new models. With GPT-5.6, some folks had early alpha access, but this was paused while the model was being evaluated and approved. Now, alpha access will be enabled for partners in the next two days before our wider launch. (I work at OpenAI.)

simianwords 3mo ago

I find codex way more usable. It’s not pretentiously verbose like Claude. It’s also responsive - I can see the progress easily and steer the conversation. With Claude, it might take 15 minutes and I would lose patience.

lillecarl 3mo ago
I held out on OpenAI until last month because I despise Sam Altman, but using Codex is a great experience and 5.5 (medium) I'm on 20$ is very capable, follows instructions when it should and confronts me/challenges me when it should. UX is nicer where the agent is somehow "separated" from execution.
gck1 3mo ago
Both are verbose in their own way, and both - terrible. Claude models love to throw huge blobs of text in architecture planning / interview conversations, but in not a mentally draining language. OpenAI models are more compact, but very dense & formal - they will speak in RFC language for a button that clicks and submits a form. So claude: 10 paragraphs of prose codex: 1 paragraph of jargon over jargon.
- cbg0 3mo ago
  I've seen this with GPT, and I usually ask it to put together a more easy to understand document for a specific target audience or reading level and it seems to do okay.

matheusmoreira 3mo ago

Will it be available on subscription tiers? That will get me to switch away from Anthropic.

minimaxir 3mo ago

...so is it a good idea to use up all my Codex quota by Thursday in the hopes of a reset to promote GPT 5.6?

SkiFire13 3mo ago

Honestly they sound like pokemon game names.

embedding-shape 3mo ago
Probably some Pokemon names might be inspired by planet names in Latin, yes.

bottlepalm 3mo ago

Coding with AI it feels like if you're not using the best model then you're possibly missing out - creating less capable, maintainable, just plain 'good' code. Why waste time using anything less than the best and cleaning up the mess later on. This is why I feel like local models and Chinese models aren't taking off (and Gemini/Grok) - they work, but they're plain just not as good as OpenAI/Anthropic. If you have the money then it doesn't make sense to code with anything else.

TheCoreh 3mo ago
There are diminishing returns, especially for more mundane tasks. Fable is nice, and I bet Sol is also nice. But there really isn't much of a difference right now when using something beyond Opus or presumably Terra for most things. They're most useful when doing greenfield, highly complex/novel tasks. When Open Source catches up, it will be more widely adopted.
- bottlepalm 3mo ago
  Yea, but by the time open source catches up, the frontier will be that much more capable and you won't want to waste time babysitting less capable models. Another dimension for the fronteir to move in is speed. Codex has /fast which is great, but yea the bottleneck right now in many cases is just the time it takes these tools to complete tasks. I'm running many sessions in parallel just because I'm waiting for tasks to finish. I'm constantly round robin'ing them, and kicking them off on the next 20 minute task. If these models were faster I wouldn't need to context switch as much.
Philip-J-Fry 3mo ago
That depends entirely on how you're using AI. If you're getting it to do all the hard thinking, then sure using the best model is probably always going to be better. But it's also going to be expensive. Using cheaper models and using your skills and expertise from the pre-AI era can get you working just as fast. You've gotta be more specific about the work you need doing. It's less "vibes" based, but they're still effective. Also, Chinese models absolutely are taking off. I used Claude and GPT at work, and then I tried using some Chinese models for personal projects. I am 100% convinced they're like 90% as good for 10% of the cost. But you've basically gotta be a good developer first and know what you want and know when it's giving you shit.

simianwords 3mo ago

Earlier I predicted that Fable and Sol would be of similar capability, I think I will be wrong. Here is why: there is no indication that there are any classifiers like in Fable. I think OpenAI found out how to lobotomise the model without classifiers but the tradeoff is that it is a weaker model. I wonder how people feel about that. Would you like a highly intelligent jagged model with classifiers or slightly less intelligent smooth model without classifiers?

user43928 3mo ago
Based on the pricing I guess GPT 5.6 is the same size as GPT 5.5. I would not be surprised if it is not as intelligent as the Mythos class models. I have seen rumors that GPT 6 may release before September. The same person also claimed that a Fable 5.1 checkpoint has been completed a few weeks ago.

elAhmo 3mo ago

I know a few of my comments are related to this, but these new names are horrible. Why introduce ANOTHER layer of confusion and drop the mini, nano suffixes that people got used to? How does this go through so many layers of management at a trillion dollar company without who has a say raising this? I simply can't believe how stupid the naming scheme from OpenAI was and continues to be even after they acknowledged it earlier.

manojlds 3mo ago
Because they want a Haiku, Sonnet, Opus equivalent I guess?
- trentor 3mo ago
  The funny thing is they had the decision to go with some less or more pretentious...
- solids 3mo ago
  Exactly, and I think the tipping point was how many times “Fable” was mentioned the last weeks
  - re-thc 3mo ago
    Then they should have just called it Fairytale
    - adammarples 3mo ago
      Confabulation
      - Yizahi 3mo ago
        Perchance
        gkbrk 3mo ago

bob1029 3mo ago

I've been running a custom enterprise agent on 5.4 and it's been very good so far. I am looking forward to trying it with the monster model to see if we can approach some additional business cases. I think if you are not seeing reasonable performance in your agent loops as of 5.5, it's likely there is a deficit with how the loop, prompt or tools interact with the environment.

linzhangrun 3mo ago

Will it be restricted as heavily as Fable? Will it come to CodeX? My quota is about to reset. Really can’t wait to use it.

cbg0 3mo ago

[dead]

egorfine 3mo ago

But only for a small percentage of world's population, right?

returnInfinity 3mo ago

I think GPT 5.6 sol is pretty slow. I went back to 5.5 Though its been just 3 days I started using. Half way through the chat, GPT 5.6 Sol stops and does a safety verification, pretty annoying

Marudhu09 3mo ago

Waiting.....

lizardking 3mo ago

Sharing names with cryptocurrencies from four-ish years ago, the hype cycle is nearly complete.

small_model 3mo ago

Fable 5 for the planning, thinking, reasoning part, then GPT 5.5 to implement is an almost perfect combo, with Fable then reviewing GPT's code. Codex CLI just seems faster at coding than Claude Code but Fable is just a level above intelligence wise, it's truly like taking to very very very smart human. With GPT 5.6 though will be interesting to see if things flip, to have Codex speed (or faster) with Fable level intelligence is a game changer.

throwitaway222 3mo ago

It's unclear to me if I as a $20/mo codex user will get this, and what TPS.

thomas_witt 3mo ago

I would be really interested in real life throughput. For an agentic chat situation, we are still on 5.4 - not because of the cost, but it's simply much faster than 5.5 with comparable results. Also we are using gpt-5.4-mini a lot for quick summaries, tldrs etc. In an ideal world we would upgrade 5.4 to 5.6 terra and 5.4 mini to 5.4 luna. But does somebody already have some measurements at least in terms of speed?