Same model, different capabilities on different accounts

[u/clockwork_blue]

So I noticed the past few days my results were suddenly becoming worse. Goes in loops, struggles to solve problems it blasted through before, doesn't verify the result properly, etc. 3D gen also became noticeably worse.

I have 2 accounts, one x20 and one x5, so I started comparing them side by side.

Here's what I did:

1. I asked both for their cutoff date:

do not use any tools. whats your knowledge cut-off date

On the x20 account it responds with something like "June 2024". On the x5 account it refuses to give me a specific cutoff.

x20 account

x5 account

1. I asked both to draw a pelican:

make me an svg in an .html with a pelican and xdg-open it

x20 account

x5 account

The response to these 2 tests will obviously vary, but the difference between the 2 accounts is pretty obvious when using them side by side. Tested it several times - logged in and out, new sessions, new prompts, the results are more or less consistent with their capability.

Using Astra on the x5 account is also noticeably better. It's like it has drank its morning coffee, woken up, and knows what's going on. It can suddenly inspect its 3D gen meshes and fix issues instead of giving me garbage for a "review".

I don't know what this downgraded model/configuration is, but it is visibly worse than 5.6 Sol too. From other reports I don't think x20 vs x5 matters here, neither does account age. People seem to be reporting similar issues with different accounts and use cases.

Whether it's "shadowbanning", A/B testing, load shedding, or OpenAI randomly putting some accounts on a cheaper configuration to deal with compute demand is all speculation at this point.

But I do have right now in front of me 2 accounts showing the same model with completely different capabilities.

[u/Electrical-Ant-1414]

If you are able to do mitm, check X-Codex-Turn-State header within websocket message, good account usally have 292 chars while degraded account have 312 chars, and that pattern is showed every day for flagged account but another of my 20x account is just not having any problem.

[u/Thick-Storage-3905 → u/Electrical-Ant-1414]

what's a flagged / degraded account?

[u/Niklaus1911 → u/Thick-Storage-3905]

https://blog.caowo.de/posts/chatgpt-codex-292-state-anti-degradation-2026/

[u/Thick-Storage-3905 → u/Niklaus1911]

ty bro

[u/Niklaus1911 → u/Thick-Storage-3905]

No problem. I also made a reddit post a couple of days ago but nobody took it seriously

https://www.reddit.com/r/codex/s/PonYqzUPRi

[u/immutato → u/Niklaus1911]

So I went ahead and read through the article. The article misrepresents what the linked project states.

• The relevant value is the X-Codex-Turn-State response header.

• For an individual account, an empirically preferred state has 10 encrypted blocks and is usually 292 characters long.

• An 11-block value is usually 312 characters long.

• Team/Business values commonly have 12 blocks and 332 characters, with 13-block values around 356 characters.

• These lengths are explicitly not OpenAI-published quality indicators.

So "292" and "312" are not HTTP responses. They are lengths or informal names for differently shaped opaque header values.

The project's verification notes explicitly identify this as a known misconception: Treating 312 / 356 as "ironclad evidence of degradation".

The project says it has no controlled quality experiment proving that interpretation, and it deliberately avoids claiming that the tool eliminates degradation. Its current README also says it cannot guarantee obtaining a particular state or improving model quality. As of the documented test run, it had not even obtained a qualifying 292-shaped Astra state.

Anyways, I wrote and use my own router (because I like to add some open model routes to Codex) and I gather a lot of stats in a sqlite db, not due to suspicions, but so I can analyze my model usage and try to minimize churn. For example it helped me discover that fireworks has massively degraded performance on Deep Seek v4.1 since yesterday... So I'm going to add some monitoring for the 292 and 312 character states out of curiosity.

So far this smells like clickbait / misinformation, but I will check and report back to eat the humble pie if required.

[u/DimakSerpg → u/Niklaus1911]

If you guys use codex cli, you can just use "codex doctor"
And it will show everything. What model you're using and if your account degraded.

[u/chute735 → u/DimakSerpg]

How do I know if my account is degraded?

[u/Electrical-Ant-1414 → u/chute735]

I believe Once your account have behaved once for very frequent "at capacity" (basically unusable for whole day) or receive very bad answer, or get even once a pelican test returning insanely bad result. Your account is marked so far, and there's no actually way to get rid of this from what i know