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

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• Hacker News
• Will it be available on subscription tiers? That will get me to switch away from Anthropic.
  by matheusmoreira
• 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.

  by bob1029
• 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.
  by ray__
• Interesting, data analysis work is the only thing I’ll use Gemini for
  by petesergeant
• 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.
  by hodgehog11
• It seems comparable to Fable to me in my uses.
  by ottoboney
• 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.
  by pavpanchekha
• 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
  by CjHuber
• 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

  by returnInfinity
• 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.

  by small_model
• Mirror: https://xcancel.com/OpenAI/status/2074704958419792299
  by jorisw
• Is this the reason Anthropic extended use of Fable 5 via subscriptions until July 12? Seems a bit like it
  by mhrmsn
• 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.

  by matheusmoreira
• 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.
  by bottlepalm
• 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.

  by cadamsdotcom
• 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.

  by Philip-J-Fry
• Does Fable write better code or just can solve more problems?
  by armchairhacker
• 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

  by dools
• 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.
  by TheCoreh
• 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.

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

  by KoolKat23
• (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".

  by leokennis
• 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.
  by thankyoufriend
• 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.

  by jug
• 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.

  by fwn
• 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.
  by mnicky
• Because they want a Haiku, Sonnet, Opus equivalent I guess?
  by manojlds
• 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.
  by reassess_blind
• 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.
  by bberrry