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GPT-5.6

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Re: GPT-5.6

#491
post #79

I wish they had kept their previous sensible naming convention instead of this celestial Sol, Terra, and Luna mumbo-jumbo

I assume they're jealous of the Fable/Mythos hype. People talk about Fable like it's a whole new thing, rather than another incremental improvement over the existing best models (which has happened several times and continues to happen).

Re: GPT-5.6

#492
post #474
post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Claude Code fan here... Codex is very good. Sometimes better. The killer feature is price. After 6+ months of exclusive Claude Code usage, I was begrudgingly forced to try Codex once Anthropic rejiggered their limits such that I kept maxing out my $200/mo plan in just a few days. These days I pay both $200/mo plans, and it's just about enough to get me through a week's work (small game studio - infinite code to write…

Genuine question/not a critique-are you actually reviewing all that code or just sending it and hoping for the best? I just can't imagine someone is reading/reviewing that much code every day, but maybe I'm wrong?

Like before AI, the scrutiny varies with the sensitivity of the area being edited.

Simple UI change? I do an AI review, but otherwise neither read nor write the code. The models are good enough they write better UI code than me, 9 out of 10 times. Not always the more idiomatic, but usually safer and more correct.

Change to our core data plane? I might spend 2-3 times more effort reviewing it than before AI. Yes, I go more slowly than pre-AI. Many more reviews, many more angles considered, including both human and (lots of) AI review cycles.

Most code is not that critical, and AI is also scarily good at writing tests. We also spend considerably more time paying down tech debt and testing thanks to AI, now that the cost is near-zero.

Net: I spend 10-25X less time on low-risk changes. I often direct (or at least approve) the implementation approach, but I rarely read this code. I spend 2-3X more time on high-risk changes. In both cases, I never write code "by hand". Since about November, I've had no reason to actually edit code in a code editor (perhaps maybe except .env files, which we don't allow agents to edit for obvious reasons).

AI is a tool. You can use it to go fast recklessly, or you can use it to go slow with confidence. Just like before AI... the skill and art of engineering is knowing when to do which.

Re: GPT-5.6

#493
post #439

I love testing the new models by asking them to code a toy RTS game. Here's what Terra did: https://senko.net/vibecode-bench/2026/rts-gpt-5.6-terra.html (one try, in codex app, xhigh effort) Comparing this to other models, I find it similar to GPT-5.5 and a bit behind Sonnet 5. You can see how other models fared here: https://senko.net/vibecode-bench/ (you can also fetch the prompt and the the 5.6 Terra resulting cod…

So the measure of a model is how well they can recreate something they easily have thousands of examples of in their training data. There's probably a better base RTS on github somewhere for free.

Re: GPT-5.6

#494
post #379

Here are 18 pelicans - six each for Luna, Terra and Sol at the six different reasoning effort levels (plus the price to generate each one): https://static.simonwillison.net/static/2026/gpt-5.6-pelican... Or if you want to see some in 3D, OpenAI featured a pelican riding a tricycle, bicycle, pony and another pelican in their livestream this morning: https://www.youtube.com/live/Wq45rvPGNHs?t=1070s

people are saying this is benchmark is saturated but all of these have occlusion issues, even sol max. A skilled human artist wouldn't have both legs in front of the bike, or a single straight line representing both leg's crank arms.

Yeah it makes no sense at all to dismiss the test, when even the very best examples are noticeably below what a skilled teenager could produce.

Dead internet theory? Semi-random parroting by real people? Or something else.

Re: GPT-5.6

#495

Not specific to OpenAI / Codex, but I'm curious what people are doing to protect themselves from any destructive actions by their coding agents? Just install and pray? Explicity approve all actions? Reconfigure for safety? Run in a sandbox (Docker) ?

Typically I just want to isolate the agent disallowing it from accessing other parts of the filesystem. Using a different user might be enough, but I typically use [bubblewrap](https://github.com/containers/bubblewrap).

Re: GPT-5.6

#496
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personally use opencode so I can swap between models and try different options. I'd say I prefer claude (fable and opus 4.8) so far, but curious to see where gpt 5.6 lands. For personal stuff, I've been pretty happy with chatgpt's $20 plan. I believe it has considerably higher limits than claude's $20 plan, and it's enough for the personal stuff I play with (hermes, and some small coding stuff). Also allows me to k…

The $20 GPT plan with GPT 5.5 lasted me, somehow, exactly one smallish fixup feature

Which limit? Weekly or 5 hour?

I've been using it with hermes and some coding (with opencode), and I am getting a LOT more than one feature out of it, but the work is spread throughout the week.

Re: GPT-5.6

#497
post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seeing the dramatic differences in scores just going from high to xhigh is just another demonstration of the bitter lesson: Just keep scaling search and learning. We are probably going to need a lot more GPUs.

These aren’t raw base models they are the result of a ton of RLHF and various adjustments. Bitter lesson wildly overstated in this context.

The scaling with reasoning models is more and more with things like verifiable rewards (coding and math), in line with bitter lesson and also Sutton invented lots of modern RL.

Re: GPT-5.6

#498
Unfortunately, I'm finding that in long-form agentic use, when I'm trying to use Sol, I keep tripping guardrails – moreso than even Fable, somehow.

I don't know exactly what part of my codebase is triggering it, so I'm going to have to keep poking, but apparently the guardrails are not that gentle despite the phrasing. :(

Re: GPT-5.6

#499
post #379

Here are 18 pelicans - six each for Luna, Terra and Sol at the six different reasoning effort levels (plus the price to generate each one): https://static.simonwillison.net/static/2026/gpt-5.6-pelican... Or if you want to see some in 3D, OpenAI featured a pelican riding a tricycle, bicycle, pony and another pelican in their livestream this morning: https://www.youtube.com/live/Wq45rvPGNHs?t=1070s

max effort sol clearly over-engineered

Re: GPT-5.6

#500

The developer's guide ( https://developers.openai.com/api/docs/guides/latest-model ) has some interesting semantic tips for using the model: > Intent understanding: GPT-5.6 can better infer the user’s underlying goal and intended level of work without you specifying every step. Continue to state important constraints, approval boundaries, and success criteria explicitly. > Original image detail: GPT-5.6 preserves the…

> Intent understanding This will totally make it brain damaged over a certain tasks. Sort of like the same brain damage that prompted OpenAI project managers to destroy ChatGPT.app today.

Can you elaborate?
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