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

https://twitter.com/OpenAI/status/2074704958419792299

by jfrbfbreudh • 15 days ago

235 205 15 days ago

ray__• 15 days 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.

ottoboney2• 15 days ago

It seems comparable to Fable to me in my uses.

wahnfrieden• 15 days 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?

scottmf• 15 days ago

What types of use cases?

CjHuber3• 15 days 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• 15 days 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.

throwuxiytayq2• 15 days 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• 15 days 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.

pavpanchekha• 15 days 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.

cbg03• 15 days 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• 15 days ago

Interesting, data analysis work is the only thing I’ll use Gemini for

hodgehog114• 15 days 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_roshin2• 15 days 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 [^1]: https://nitter.net/theo/status/2074720467395756499

isoprophlex• 15 days 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.)

bashtoni3• 15 days 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.

ttoinou3• 15 days ago

There is a whole religion about tests that is worth attacking though

patates3• 15 days ago

it's pretty clear he has very little understanding of development or engineering

I cannot prove it but I have a feeling that you may be conflating "he clearly has different opinions on things I consider non-negotiable" to "he doesn't know what he's talking about".

I also watched a lot of his videos. I wildly disagree with him a lot of times, but he has his reasoning, and I can see (and verify!) that those ideas are coming from an engineering perspective.

Havoc• 15 days ago

And half his videos are him coming up with indirect ways of saying look how amazing I am.

zarzavat2• 15 days ago

There's a simpler explanation. Social media rewards surprise and hype, not truth. Don't expect objectivity from someone who gets paid by the view.

torginus• 15 days ago

He has big 'theatre kid' energy (at least certainly had, watched him years ago) - he desperately wants to make clear that there's a group of cool kids and he's in it.

His youtube channel used to be about talking about the new FOTM Javascript framework/technology - not presented as 'here's a cool thing, let's check it out' but 'everyone worth a damn already uses this, get with the times grandpa'

satvikpendem20• 15 days ago

"Average Theo video be like": https://youtu.be/h1p9zdUtUdo

It's shocking how many accurate tropes this hits.

pdantix• 15 days ago

i already found his clear shilling of nextjs a bit distasteful, but his whole gpt-5 thing really just made it clear he's just not worth listening to.

stingraycharles3• 15 days ago

“Understands intent well and hammers until it gets there. “

If there’s anything I learned over the past 12-18 months is that this is a recipe for disaster, except for throwaway stuff.

I thought most senior engineers settled on the fact that steering a model yields much better results?

oefrha• 15 days ago

I wouldn’t call it a recipe for disaster, but oh boy if you leave an agent that “hammers until it gets there” on its own with an underlying bug in a dependency…

icepush• 15 days ago

It's very possible that would be the best strategy over the last 12-18 months and now that this is released it is no longer the best strategy.

hodgehog114• 15 days ago

For some tasks, there is no amount of "steering" that will produce sensible code. The model needs to be sufficiently capable as a baseline; this is the "intent" that people are referring to with Fable.

jychang3• 15 days ago

Not quite as "smart" as Fable, but it is incredibly capable.

THIS IS BECAUSE GPT-5.6 SOL IS... just a more posttrained version of GPT-5.5, not a brand new bigger model than GPT-5.5. It's not like how Mythos is bigger than Opus.

OpenAI switching to Sol/Terra/Luna renaming is just a way to rip off people and charge more usage for the same sized model.

GPT-5.6 --------> GPT-5.6 Sol

GPT-5.6-mini ---> GPT-5.6 Terra

GPT-5.6-nano ---> GPT-5.6 Luna

Except OpenAI is about to advertise GPT-5.6 Sol and GPT-5.6 Terra as a whole tier better, than if they named it GPT-5.6 and GPT-5.6-mini.

ppaattrriicckk• 15 days ago

OpenAI switching to Sol/Terra/Luna renaming is just a way to rip off people and charge more money for the same sized model.

Excuse me, but what are you on about?

Unless I'm mistaken, they have literally(1) stated that it will cost $5 per 1M tokens in, and $30 for 1M output tokens. The same as GPT-5.5.

[1] https://openai.com/index/previewing-gpt-5-6-sol/

threatripper• 15 days ago

My feeling is that GPT-5.5 doesn't lack the raw intelligence so much as it lacks "methodology". I don't know how exactly to put it... how to approach a problem, how to take care of the details and side effects, how to handle unexpected difficulties and bugs, how to not spin out of control, how to write solid code, how to clean up afterwards, how to document, how to give useful feedback... the things that you learn on the job.

So, if they improved a lot in those areas, then GPT-5.6 could become a lot more useful compared to GPT-5.5 even though it might score lower in many benchmarks. It's possible but unlikely since their approach was mostly brute force in the past.

deadlast2• 15 days ago

I use Open AI and Claude a lot right like a lot everyday for hours multiple hours. Open AI gives much more value for money than Claude much more I'd say x 10. Mainly I use it for writing fiction books and literally Claude is locked 90% of everyday trying to jip me for tokens. It's not as good at coding for what I do which is a very complicated application. However it is very good at writing it's really good which is why I keep it right but over 90% maybe actually all of my work except the initial draft of a chapter is done by open AI.

behnamoh4• 15 days ago

OpenAI already has a Mythos level model, it's called GPTCyber and before that, it was called gpt-5.5-pro.

whs• 15 days ago

Sounds like the same problem as condom. Nobody want to buy the "mini" size.

mejutoco2• 15 days ago

What is the language of those words (sol, terra, luna). It does not seem to be a single language.

Spanish: Sol, tierra, luna

Italian: Sole, terra, luna

Catalan: Sol, terra, lluna

Portuguese: Sol, terra, lua

Might as well call it gelatto, siesta, fiesta if they think it sounds cool.

Davidzheng• 15 days ago

Post-training can have big gains no? I don't think the current sizes at ~1T are saturated in intelligence (it's like saying AlphaGo Master is just a post-trained version of AlphaGo Lee)

zuzululu• 15 days ago

here is the original x post

https://x.com/theo/status/2074708892341481755

5.6 sol seems to hit a lot of the gaps with 5.5

sucks its not "mythos" but i will take it

jeswin• 15 days ago

Thoughts[^0] from Theo, who had early access:

I looked at his YouTube, and found a stream of industry gossip and beginner content like "web dev tutorials". I have nothing against such content and it may be useful and good fun to watch.

But does that say anything about this particular model? People have been using models effectively for web code since Gpt 3.x.

satvikpendem20• 15 days ago

That's sad to see Sol not beating Fable as it was explicitly stated by OpenAI that Sol benchmarks and overall performance were better than Fable.

xyzsparetimexyz2• 15 days ago

This guy is enthusiastic about everything. Not a great benchmark

nullbio• 15 days ago

Next up: Thoughts from an OnlyFans model.

Copenjin• 13 days ago

Thoughts[^0] from Theo

I will stop here, sorry but I think we have limited time to listen to opinions and nowadays since they are abundant on social media we should give preference to the substantiated ones.

reassess_blind3• 15 days 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.

avereveard2• 15 days 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• 15 days 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 recent show hn: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48777790

tyteen4a03• 15 days ago

Why not both? T3 Code exists.

reassess_blind3• 15 days ago

Hadn't heard about it. Launching either "codex" or "claude" from cli isn't exactly a pain point I was looking to fix.

Edit: I guess the real answer is that I don't want multiple subscriptions. I use one for a month, and then decide if I switch to the other.

xyzsparetimexyz2• 15 days ago

Nice try theo

orliesaurus• 15 days ago

theo's alt account

behnamoh4• 15 days ago

How? I'm pretty much locked into Claude Code and even if gpt models are good now, the experience with codex CLI has been so bad I won't go back to it.

e.g., it still doesn't have /revise or /undo!

reassess_blind3• 15 days ago

I've never used /revise or /undo, everything I do is just through natural language and seems to work great.

skeptic_ai• 15 days ago

How can be locked? If you have a proper agents in your project it will work out of the box with any model. I use codex and Hermes on same project with 0 issues. Skills, MCP and other features are useless imo.

My agent has access to glab with a user and can do whatever within permissions. No need a MCP. MCP maybe just for browser control.

theshrike794• 15 days ago

Pi.dev makes GPT models a lot smarter, the codex harness isn’t very good

satvikpendem20• 15 days ago

Use the Codex desktop app.

rane• 14 days ago

Try https://github.com/raine/claude-code-proxy

I canceled Claude plan a few months back and have been using this. OpenAI plans are much more generous.

ramshanker• 15 days ago

Same here. Late to agentic party. 1st month was Codex, 2nd Claude, already thinking 3rd will be Codex again! Since Fable will be gone soon.

bberrry• 15 days ago

5.6 Sol is extremely good, definitely Fable level from my experience. With 5.6 Sol being half the price and noticeably faster I think Anthropic will find the coming months unpleasant.

mixtureoftakes• 15 days ago

How do you have access?

hodgehog114• 15 days ago

I would be absolutely stunned if this were really the case in general given how irresponsibly large Fable is, and 5.6 Sol most definitely is not. It depends on what your problems are though, I suppose, since there are those that swear Fable is at best a minor upgrade over Opus, which has not been my experience.

What type of work is this for in your experience?

atraac2• 15 days ago

I personally like Codex much more as vscode integration. It's actually nice to use, looks great, handles images much, much better, can even send me images in the chat to see what it's doing(my side project is based heavily on image processing), and what's most important to me is that /steer actually works. When I type something to Claude mid-task, it'll maybe acknowledge that within next few minutes, although it seems to be actually quicker last few days but still takes a minute or two, whereas Codex will almost instantly read it, switch what it's doing or answer me. It feels much more polished in some ways(though usage page in settings almost never loads for me).

satvikpendem20• 15 days ago

That's an IDE difference not a model difference, it's called steering vs queuing.

laurels-marts• 15 days 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.

jychang3• 15 days 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• 15 days ago

bigger doesn't mean better, chill out

cbg03• 15 days 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.

What is this very confident assumption based on?

vorticalbox• 14 days ago

do we know that Mythos is in fact a bigger model then opus?

flawn• 14 days ago

Also tokens/sec are not only dependent on parameter size, so that is kind of a brittle theory.

aarvin_roshin2• 15 days 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• 15 days ago

What do you feel is the best model for interface design right now?

Dibes• 15 days ago

For me claude is the best, hands down. Fable took it a step even further.

dannyw• 15 days 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• 15 days ago

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

mhrmsn2• 15 days ago

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

matheusmoreira2• 15 days 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.

mhrmsn2• 15 days 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

yzydserd• 15 days ago

The question is, launch to who …

Tiberium• 15 days ago

To everyone.

steve-atx-7600• 15 days ago

"We’re expanding preview access globally now." Preview access? Not as straightforward as "launching on thursday".

simianwords2• 15 days 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• 15 days 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.

gck13• 15 days 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.

cbg03• 15 days 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.

matheusmoreira2• 15 days ago

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

minimaxir• 15 days 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• 15 days ago

Honestly they sound like pokemon game names.

embedding-shape2• 15 days ago

Probably some Pokemon names might be inspired by planet names in Latin, yes.

bottlepalm4• 15 days 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• 15 days 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.

bottlepalm4• 15 days 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• 15 days 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.

bottlepalm4• 15 days ago

Honestly I'm on $200 a month for Claude Max and $100 a month for Codex, and it's nothing compared to the productivity gains if you're programming professionally. 10 bucks a day, I spend more for lunch. Time is money and I'm not going to waste time with a lesser model if I don't have to.

theshrike794• 15 days ago

OpenCode + GLM has become a daily driver for me. With the z.ai subscription it’s super cheap too.

I’d describe it as something between Sonnet and Opus.

user439282• 15 days ago

Or maybe you are still iterating on a plan or spec file with Qwen 3.6 27B, while I implemented three features with Fable and QA tested them in the testing environment.

Of course, if you think that this approach is as fast and effective as "vibe coding" as in outsourcing more thinking to the AI, it is not surprising you would conclude the cheaper models were nearly as useful.

I don't know if you are right or not, a lot depends on the constraints of the project and team.

Some of the newer arguably now viable use cases, such as porting a large codebase to Rust, are certainly not going to be as fast with a more manual approach.

armchairhacker• 15 days ago

Does Fable write better code or just can solve more problems?

bottlepalm4• 15 days ago

Better code hands down. Actually GPT 5.5 is a good example of a model that's generally better at solving problems than Opus 4.8, but the code it generates is worse - over engineered, shortcuts, etc.. Fable does both, better code and solves problems, but it's also very expensive. Currently I use Opus mostly, Codex for code reviews because it is pedantic, and Fable for tough problems and high level design.

cadamsdotcom• 15 days ago

70s thru 90s computing and even into the early 2000s every new bit of computer meant new capabilities.

Eventually it plateaued and now you can do a decent chunk of your computing on something from 2012.

People keep saying scaling will top out, for example. But scaling keeps stubbornly refusing. New techniques keep coming along too. It's really still exploding into existence and every new generation brings new capability. Eventually it'll clear a ceiling for your key use cases and you'll stop worrying about new models.

It always pays to look back at history and see if you can pattern match.

dools2• 14 days ago

I’ve been using mostly deepseek v4, kimi k2.6, and gpt 5.3-codex

I sometimes chuck a few tokens to gpt 5.5 and opus 4.8 and they can sometimes solve a problem one of the other models couldn’t, but they’re not like 10x better or anything in my experience. More like 1.2x better

simianwords2• 15 days 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?

user439282• 15 days 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• 15 days 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• 15 days ago

Because they want a Haiku, Sonnet, Opus equivalent I guess?

trentor• 15 days ago

The funny thing is they had the decision to go with some less or more pretentious...

solids• 15 days ago

Exactly, and I think the tipping point was how many times “Fable” was mentioned the last weeks

gck13• 14 days ago

And the names they came up with mirror the names OAI models come up with when I try to have them suggest codenames for projects. Just lacking any sort of imagination or coherence.

rkagerer• 15 days ago

so many layers of management

Sounds like the source of your problem, right there.

AussieWog93• 15 days ago

Honestly, "mini" and "nano" to me just seem like really awful names from a marketing perspective - they might as well call it "lobotomized crap version of GPT" and "even more lobotomized crap version of GPT".

Whereas Sol/Luna/Terra reads more like "GPT for hard/medium/basic problems".

bananaflag• 15 days ago

See, you are already confused: it's Sol/Terra/Luna, descending order by diameter. One is tempted to put the Sun and the Moon before the Earth, as those are "celestial".

atraac2• 15 days ago

I disagree. I needed a small text to json model that would parse basic info into a json, nothing else. I instantly knew to start with nano and if not good enough, use mini. This was obvious to me, just looking at the name. Now you have to actually know what those names mean. And I can guarantee you they'll add 5 more to create more hype, or make new names in whatever the next-gen-world-breaking-dangerous-model will be.

mnicky2• 15 days ago

My theory is that they don't have Fable-class intelligence so they needed different hype vehicle :) This rename helps build excitement a bit more than just releasing ordinary GPT-5.6 increment.

bayindirh2• 15 days ago

I think OpenAI can also use the naming playbooks of current Intel and AMD of 2000s.

Possibilities are endless:

    - OpenAI GPT 5.6 F5+
    - OpenAI GPT5-6000FT
    - OpenAI GPT5-6505FS
    - OpenAI GPT5-6F05UL

Sounds nice, looks cool. Why not?

satvikpendem20• 15 days ago

Because people weren't using the mini and nano models. Like someone else said those are awful marketing names.

bpavuk• 15 days ago

well I'm using mini models and GPT-5.4-mini is better than Gemini 3.1 Pro (considerably faster in exchange for less broad world knowledge) and 3.5 Flash (that one's trash by itself)

jug• 15 days ago

Yet, in a month we'll be fine. We were fine with Anthropic naming models by music. I'm sure celestial bodies will be OK too. Larger = better. It's simple. As for the why? Marketing, making products feel "fresh", exciting, new, something alluring that we didn't have before. So, much like since industrialization.

What surprises me is not this, but that OpenAI changed things up without syncing with a GPT 6.

fwn• 15 days ago

I mostly used GPT-Venti for the complex part, but the documentation was done by either GPT-Grande or GPT-Tall.

On a more serious note, I can vividly imagine how difficult it is to agree on a set of words that could plausibly suggest a relational meaning while remaining non-diminutive in every individual model name. Adding to the complexity, it is going to be used globally, and the main competitor already has an arguably successful, fabulous naming scheme.

It sounds like a PR minefield.

leokennis2• 15 days ago

(At least in Europe) Toyota used to name their models "Sol", "Luna" and "Terra" as well. Sol had all the trimmings, Terra had the least.

It sounded nicer than something like "Luxury" and "Basic".

ayewo• 15 days ago

Sol had all the trimmings, Terra had the least.

That’s interesting. My understanding is that:

Sol = Sun Terra = Earth Luna = Moon

So it’s a bit surprising that in Toyota’s nomenclature, Terra is the basic trim instead of Luna.

thankyoufriend• 15 days ago

If you ever find out, let me know. My department at work has been renamed so many times, I don't even know our current name.

KoolKat23• 15 days ago

Nano and mini, which is smaller? This is a bit more clear imo. It also helps for expectations, bigger isn't necessarily better for all use cases.

(Well given the limited amount of things we can deduce from a name)

dragonwriter• 15 days ago

Nano and mini, which is smaller?

mini > micro (see, e.g., -skirts, -computers)

micro > nano (see, SI)

so, mini > nano.

jeffybefffy519• 14 days ago

Marketing... that is all

bob1029• 15 days 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• 15 days 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.

egorfine• 15 days ago

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

returnInfinity• 15 days 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• 15 days ago

Waiting.....

lizardking• 14 days ago

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

small_model• 14 days 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• 14 days ago

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

thomas_witt• 13 days 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?

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

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