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GPT-6 Astra on OpenRouter

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81–90 of 252 posts

Re: GPT-6 Astra on OpenRouter

#81
post #19

I posted this in the other Astra thread but it's just fallen off the homepage, so... Pelicans from Astra, plus 5.6 Sol, Terra, Luna for comparison: https://static.simonwillison.net/static/2026/gpt-6-and-5.6-p... I think this is a genuinely interesting comparison grid. Astra may be more expensive, but if you have a budget of 10 cents for a Pelican Astra low gives you something SO much better than the other models. Ast…

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Re: GPT-6 Astra on OpenRouter

#82
post #19

I posted this in the other Astra thread but it's just fallen off the homepage, so... Pelicans from Astra, plus 5.6 Sol, Terra, Luna for comparison: https://static.simonwillison.net/static/2026/gpt-6-and-5.6-p... I think this is a genuinely interesting comparison grid. Astra may be more expensive, but if you have a budget of 10 cents for a Pelican Astra low gives you something SO much better than the other models. Ast…

You would not expect the developers of the model to optimize for a well known benchmark?

I would expect it happens more organically where people’s discussion of the benchmark and posted results find their way into the training data, like anything else on the internet.

Re: GPT-6 Astra on OpenRouter

#83
post #19

I posted this in the other Astra thread but it's just fallen off the homepage, so... Pelicans from Astra, plus 5.6 Sol, Terra, Luna for comparison: https://static.simonwillison.net/static/2026/gpt-6-and-5.6-p... I think this is a genuinely interesting comparison grid. Astra may be more expensive, but if you have a budget of 10 cents for a Pelican Astra low gives you something SO much better than the other models. Ast…

You would not expect the developers of the model to optimize for a well known benchmark?

What is this supposed to mean exactly? Do you think there are developers at OpenAI or Anthropic whose job is to train these state of the art models to draw pelicans riding bicycles? Like how exactly do you expect them to be doing that anyways? Hiring graphic artists to create SVGs of bike riding pelicans and feeding thousands of them into the model's training set?

Re: GPT-6 Astra on OpenRouter

#84
post #19

I posted this in the other Astra thread but it's just fallen off the homepage, so... Pelicans from Astra, plus 5.6 Sol, Terra, Luna for comparison: https://static.simonwillison.net/static/2026/gpt-6-and-5.6-p... I think this is a genuinely interesting comparison grid. Astra may be more expensive, but if you have a budget of 10 cents for a Pelican Astra low gives you something SO much better than the other models. Ast…

You would not expect the developers of the model to optimize for a well known benchmark?

It stopped being a valuable benchmark proxy quite a few model versions ago. Simon knows it, so is everyone who’s serious about it

Treat it like a bit as is

Re: GPT-6 Astra on OpenRouter

#85
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You would not expect the developers of the model to optimize for a well known benchmark?

What is this supposed to mean exactly? Do you think there are developers at OpenAI or Anthropic whose job is to train these state of the art models to draw pelicans riding bicycles? Like how exactly do you expect them to be doing that anyways? Hiring graphic artists to create SVGs of bike riding pelicans and feeding thousands of them into the model's training set?

You gotta look up how RLHF works before you ask a demanding question like this.

Re: GPT-6 Astra on OpenRouter

#86
post #19

I posted this in the other Astra thread but it's just fallen off the homepage, so... Pelicans from Astra, plus 5.6 Sol, Terra, Luna for comparison: https://static.simonwillison.net/static/2026/gpt-6-and-5.6-p... I think this is a genuinely interesting comparison grid. Astra may be more expensive, but if you have a budget of 10 cents for a Pelican Astra low gives you something SO much better than the other models. Ast…

[dead]

Re: GPT-6 Astra on OpenRouter

#87
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You would not expect the developers of the model to optimize for a well known benchmark?

What is this supposed to mean exactly? Do you think there are developers at OpenAI or Anthropic whose job is to train these state of the art models to draw pelicans riding bicycles? Like how exactly do you expect them to be doing that anyways? Hiring graphic artists to create SVGs of bike riding pelicans and feeding thousands of them into the model's training set?

Generate two images, get a vision model to judge, then RL reward the better one. And yes, OpenAI employees on twitter bragged about the model's SVG capabilities. So there are clearly people working there who care about it.

Re: GPT-6 Astra on OpenRouter

#88
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's quite shocking, at a sufficiently advanced level we can make all non-realistic graphics purely out of SVGs, as they'd have good scaling for things like logos and app icons. I know it was technically and theoretically possible before AI but most people weren't spending hours tweaking SVG HTML. I remember making an SVG dark mode toggle icon and it took days to get it right, I assume it's one shottable now.

I thought all the designers have been using vector graphics for a long time now.

Aldus Freehand 1.0 was released in 1988. Adobe Illustrator was first released in 1987.

Re: GPT-6 Astra on OpenRouter

#89
post #19

I posted this in the other Astra thread but it's just fallen off the homepage, so... Pelicans from Astra, plus 5.6 Sol, Terra, Luna for comparison: https://static.simonwillison.net/static/2026/gpt-6-and-5.6-p... I think this is a genuinely interesting comparison grid. Astra may be more expensive, but if you have a budget of 10 cents for a Pelican Astra low gives you something SO much better than the other models. Ast…

You would not expect the developers of the model to optimize for a well known benchmark?

There was a HN post that tested this hypothesis a few weeks ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49010129

Re: GPT-6 Astra on OpenRouter

#90
It's ability to handle non-90 degree cutouts and shapes for web dev is one of the best I've seen. The vision model on this is VERY capable.

Here's an image design source of truth: https://image.non.io/78f4cd8b-2560-4643-9a51-96a89171f994.we...

And here's the page it build from it: https://image.non.io/e7d3a9e5-f9df-4fd8-b79f-1f90280f978f.we...

Note the flowing svg lines, and how accurately it recreated them. Here's Opus 5 for comparison - you can really see how while Astra really recreated the flow that was in the original design, opus only got the general vibe: https://image.non.io/dfe13de0-4487-431f-8b69-544ff3030dac.we...

One thing I will say is you are paying for quality. That site build cost $24 - extremely non-trivial for a simple frontend.

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