OpenAI staffer maps out which of GPT-5.6 Sol’s five reasoning levels fits which task complexity

GPT-5.6 Sol ships with five reasoning levels from “Light” to “xhigh,” plus “Max” and “Ultra” modes that deploy multiple sub-agents in parallel. OpenAI’s Vaibhav Srivastav recommends starting low and only scaling up when needed.

“Medium” works for planning and analysis. “High” and “xhigh” handle complex, multi-step work or “careful verification.” “Max” and “Ultra” work differently: “Max” lets a model spend more time on a single problem. “Ultra” deploys multiple sub-agents in parallel, each tackling a different part of a task. Higher levels take more time and burn through more tokens. Srivastav recommends starting low and only scaling up when needed. The levels don’t map to GPT-5.5’s tiers, Srivastav says, and anyone switching over should start one level lower than they’re used to. None of this brings OpenAI any closer to its stated goal of making ChatGPT so simple that “almost no interface” is needed. On top of that, Sol’s Pro tiers are still missing. Those leaked earlier in a genomics benchmark paper. Even ambitious users will struggle to pick the right level without running their own benchmarks, though the setup may help OpenAI collect usage data.AdDEC_D_Incontent-1Ad Follow The Decoder for AI news, background stories and expert analyses.