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

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bashtoni an hour ago | parent | next [-]

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.

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patates 26 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

> 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.

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Havoc 20 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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

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ttoinou 34 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

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

	▲	bashtoni 18 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Sure. If his take was "100% unit test coverage is a waste of time" I think that's not unreasonable. You could make a case that the "you must write tests before you write code, every single time!" stuff is needlessly dogmatic. I also think that sometimes people focus too much on unit tests to the detriment of end to end tests that better model actual system interactions. None of these were Theo's take. He was pushing the idea that unit tests in general were a waste of time because you could be shipping new features instead. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvBHyip4peo for an example of this. The nicest possible interpretation on this is that he's deliberately saying something he knows is wrong to attract attention.

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jychang an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> 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 money 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 charge way more money for GPT-5.6 Sol and GPT-5.6 Terra, than if they named it GPT-5.6 and GPT-5.6-mini.

	▲	deadlast2 16 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		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.
	▲	threatripper 31 minutes ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		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.
	▲	ppaattrriicckk 33 minutes ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		> 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/
	▲	behnamoh 13 minutes ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		OpenAI already has a Mythos level model, it's called GPTCyber and before that, it was called gpt-5.5-pro.
	▲	33 minutes ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		[deleted]

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isoprophlex 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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.)

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zuzululu 18 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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

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stingraycharles an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

“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?

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icepush 36 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

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.

	▲	stingraycharles 2 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		That would be an extremely massive leap if agents could suddenly make nuanced architectural decisions and prevent technical debt. In my experience even Fable still requires guidance (although the options it provides are generally better).

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oefrha 39 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

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…