Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: What do you do while ChatGPT-5 is thinking?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

1–10 of 29 posts

Ask HN: What do you do while ChatGPT-5 is thinking?

#1

Post by cuber_messenger »

I use ChatGPT-5 Thinking a lot for day-to-day work. I prefer the response quality over speed, so I always pick the longer-thinking model. It takes ~1–5 minutes (often 1–2) to respond, but those short waits are getting increasingly distracting.

I find myself doing something else, and it eventually takes more than the thinking time. Such as right now, it takes me 5 minutes to write this post, and ChatGPT responded like 3 minutes ago.

Does anyone else have the same problem? What do you do during these gaps? :D

Re: Ask HN: What do you do while ChatGPT-5 is thinking?

#2

Post by loveparade »

I often use that time to spec out a future task. Either by going through Github issues, doing some research and adding details, or by spinning up another codex/claude session to create a detailed design document for a future task and iterating on that. So one agent is coding while another is helping me to spec out future work. So when the coding agent is done I can immediately start on the next task with a proper spec, reducing margin for error.

Re: Ask HN: What do you do while ChatGPT-5 is thinking?

#3

Post by chainofthought »

I'm always prompting. I let Gemini calendar my time (Google Calendar, of course) so that there are zero gaps where unwanted human thought could sneak in. I use an agent manager called Pelican to check in with all of my agents every second and have them tell me what I should be working on next using meta-agents, which are agents running tools in a loop to run tools in a loop. It's super effective!

Re: Ask HN: What do you do while ChatGPT-5 is thinking?

#4

Post by cuber_messenger »

loveparade wrote: post #2

I often use that time to spec out a future task. Either by going through Github issues, doing some research and adding details, or by spinning up another codex/claude session to create a detailed design document for a future task and iterating on that. So one agent is coding while another is helping me to spec out future work. So when the coding agent is done I can immediately start on the next task with a proper spe…

Good for you. It's like you are a 2-thread human-LLM CPU.

Re: Ask HN: What do you do while ChatGPT-5 is thinking?

#6

Post by loveparade »

cuber_messenger wrote: post #4
loveparade wrote: post #2

I often use that time to spec out a future task. Either by going through Github issues, doing some research and adding details, or by spinning up another codex/claude session to create a detailed design document for a future task and iterating on that. So one agent is coding while another is helping me to spec out future work. So when the coding agent is done I can immediately start on the next task with a proper spe…

Good for you. It's like you are a 2-thread human-LLM CPU.

Sad but true.

Re: Ask HN: What do you do while ChatGPT-5 is thinking?

#10

Post by iamflimflam1 »

chainofthought wrote: post #3

I'm always prompting. I let Gemini calendar my time (Google Calendar, of course) so that there are zero gaps where unwanted human thought could sneak in. I use an agent manager called Pelican to check in with all of my agents every second and have them tell me what I should be working on next using meta-agents, which are agents running tools in a loop to run tools in a loop. It's super effective!

I can’t tell if this is a serious post or not…
Post reply on HN