I haven't really used it yet.
2 months ago management was showing us scoreboards, praising leaders who used most tokens. Last few weeks, we're getting weekly emails, telling us that whenever we can - we should use cheaper models, and that we should watch the page which shows our tokens usage.
But of course to some asshole non-technical people it meant asking for their vibe coded bullshit to be merged into production without review and fighting about it.
The AI companies' salespeople must be the greatest geniuses in the history of the world.
Everyone is insane.
Please stop using this brand new hammer for glassmaking.
GPT 5.5's double token cost was the threshold for me. These things are getting expensive quickly - the subsidized pricing can't go on forever.
it's similar to Claude code ultracode.
there is no ultra effort level implemented on the backend. it's just alias in the codex to max effort setting and single line addition to prompt to use subagents proactively. that's all
as far as we know pro models work differently. for once those are backend implementations and they probably run multiple parallel reasonings for any chunk and use some judgement model to pick best version as persistent one. but that's what I believe is most popular guess, because this is openai secret sauce.
there is still no way to use pro models from codex, or at leat so far there is no trace of it anywhere.
https://www.theinformation.com/newsletters/ai-agenda/openai-...
> Additionally, we’re introducing a new ultra mode that goes beyond the capabilities of a single agent by leveraging subagents to accelerate complex work.
https://openai.com/index/previewing-gpt-5-6-sol/
Can someone explain how this compares with Pro? I thought Pro was already something similar.
I think gpt-5.5-pro runs 12x parallel gpt-5.5 agents behind the scene and uses OpenAI's secret sauce to synthesize their answers into one insanely good response.
How does it compare to GPT-5.5?
Previewing GPT‑5.6 Sol: a next-generation model
No context, nothing, just a title and a random link to a tweet, which has a seemingly relevant response from someone who works at OpenAI I guess.
Next logical step: mandatory age sniffing but it can only be done if you have AI. Those not complying will be denied access to the www.
more competition is always good for consumers.