If it's anywhere close to the same universe as smaller models in its behavior, a lot of time in "thinking" mode is spent on reiterating on any constraints given in a prompt. So the more constraints you give it, the more tokens it will spend going "Hold on, the prompt said I have to dot my i's and cross my t's. Let me go through my work to check that all the i's are dotted."

So the user must be concise, but cannot ask the model to be concise... because it hurts the model...

Maybe Codex has the same problem I sometimes have focusing while reading and has to reread the same sentence over and over again.

> A shorter prompt results in half as much tokens spend? I find this very hard to believe.

Should be relatively easy to test. And if it's true, just first use a very cheap near-SOTA model to first rewrite the prompt to a similar but shorter prompt before sending it to GPT-5.6.

pi.dev for example can control other harnesses.

An example: the other day for example I didn't understand why Claude Code CLI (which I hadn't used in a while) wouldn't let me cut/paste anymore (turns out they apparently fixed some long-standing scrolling and blinking SNAFU, but this modified how mouse selection/paste worked under Xorg but I didn't immediately realized they changed this)... I had to copy/paste the oauth challenge/response for I was logged out (maybe because I hadn't used Claude Code CLI in a while, dunno). But my usual copy/paste wasn't working and I didn't know how to fix it at first. And because I wasn't logged in, I couldn't use Claude Code itself for this.

My prompt was something like: "Screenshot the Claude Code TUI, transform the URL into a link, open that link in a broswer to get the oauth token, copy it character by character by simulating keypresses in the Claude Code CLI".

(remember: I had no idea how to paste with the mouse not with the keyboard, no I know but I was pissed off and wanted to be logged in immediately... So: another model / harness to the rescue).

(for the curious: it decided to use xdotool and use a 50 ms wait between simulated keypresses to copy the oauth token)

This worked just fine. And I that with a cheap model.

I think that just like Linux and Git owned many proprietary software, we'll soon have fully open-source harnesses orchestrating everything and delegating the work to proprietary tools (like "ChatGPT now Codex and vice-versa" and Claude Code)... If proprietary tools are even still needed at all.

Honestly I begin to wonder if they're even needed at all: the models, sure, while waiting for the open-weight ones to beat them. But those proprietary tools trying to lock people in?

I feel like the open source harnesses are already more powerful.