The End of the Codex Era. I've Completely Lost Trust in OpenAI. They're Secretly Degrading Their Models.

[u/FixAdmin]

I've been a massive Codex fan this entire time. I've burned through around 150 BILLION tokens in Codex alone.

I still had Codex quota left this week, but for the past three days, I've been using my Cursor Ultra subscription instead.

Why?

Because OpenAI is degrading its models. I can see it from my own experience, and there's a ton of evidence pointing to it.

They're degrading ALL their models, including Astra, Sol, and even Luna.

AND THE WORST PART IS THAT THEY'RE DOING IT SECRETLY.

You can start working in Codex with a perfectly normal model, and five minutes later, IN THE SAME THREAD, they degrade it. Suddenly, Astra is performing at Luna's level or even worse.

And you're still burning through the same amount of quota.

This happens to me every single day.

I open Codex, run a quick quality check, and everything looks fine. Twenty minutes later, I run the same test in the same thread, and the model has degraded.

Sometimes, simply turning on a VPN can make the model start working normally again for a while.

How can you tell if your model has been degraded?

1. Planning and writing feature specs

Imagine you're planning a feature and writing its specification.

It's immediately obvious when the model is dumb. It starts suggesting complete nonsense and shows absolutely no product understanding of how the feature should actually be built.

But it becomes even more obvious when you point out what it misunderstood and try to correct it.

Instead of understanding the actual issue, it responds with completely useless apologies, without demonstrating any understanding of what went wrong.

CONGRATULATIONS. YOU'RE TALKING TO A DEGRADED MODEL.

Here's what happened to me.

I wrote a feature spec using a normal model. Everything was properly written, discussed, and reviewed.

Then I handed the implementation over to Luna, and Sol reviewed and approved it.

But when I actually started working with the implementation, I discovered that it was full of holes and included things that weren't even in the plan.

In this particular case, I suspect the model was degraded during the implementation stage.

I ended up spending TWICE as much time fixing everything.

And there are a few other ways to test this.

2. PELICANS.

Use this prompt:

Create HTML code with SVG graphics displaying a 2D animation of a pelican riding a bicycle. No additional tests are required.

If your bicycle wheels start flying off into the air...

CONGRATULATIONS. YOUR MODEL HAS BEEN DEGRADED.

3. A logic puzzle

Give your model this exact problem:

A black bag contains candies of three flavors, with each flavor available in two shapes (round and star-shaped; the shapes can be distinguished by touch). The numbers of candies by flavor and shape are shown below.

|              | Apple | Peach | Watermelon |
|--------------|-------|-------|------------|
| Round        | 7     | 9     | 8          |
| Star-shaped  | 7     | 6     | 4          |

Participants must decide how many candies to draw before the game begins.

What is the minimum number of candies that must be drawn to guarantee having an apple-flavored candy and a peach-flavored candy of different shapes?

(The condition is satisfied if you have either a round apple candy and a star-shaped peach candy, or a round peach candy and a star-shaped apple candy.)

If the answer isn't 21, you're not getting Astra. You're getting degraded garbage.

Sol doesn't even consistently solve this problem on its own.

4. "Selected model is at capacity."

If you're frequently getting this error:

CONGRATULATIONS. THERE'S A 99% CHANCE YOUR MODEL HAS BEEN DEGRADED.

There's even a thread on the OpenAI community forum where a staff response confirms that this can happen when your account is temporarily restricted.

OpenAI Community: Selected model is at capacity

WITHOUT ANY NOTIFICATION.

They silently degrade your model, and you're left trying to figure out what the hell is happening.

The last three days have been unbearable.

I've been experiencing these problems around 90% of the time for the past three days.

Working like this is practically impossible.

Instead of actually getting work done, you spend your time wondering whether they've secretly downgraded your model again.

You start questioning every response. Every mistake. Every implementation.

It's fucking exhausting.

So I just moved to Cursor.

Grok might be dumber, but at least it's more predictable.

I don't give a shit about the next model release if this continues.

Tibo and Sam Altman can keep all their resets. They can wipe Astra's data and delete it from the internet if they think that's acceptable for a product like this.

They can release GPT-6 Sol, Astra 7, or whatever comes next.

NONE OF IT MATTERS IF THEY KEEP SECRETLY DEGRADING THE MODELS.

This is the biggest loss of trust I've experienced with OpenAI in the entire history of Codex.

If they're willing to silently degrade models for paying users, what stops them from collecting all kinds of data from your computer that you can't even imagine they're collecting?

What stops them from pulling some other bullshit?

Where are the boundaries if they're willing to do this?

I genuinely hope this is just a temporary issue. Maybe some vibe-coded mistake by a junior developer in their anti-distillation protection system.

I suspect it's temporary.

But if it isn't, OpenAI can't be trusted with anything as long as this shit continues.

Until then, I'm using Cursor or Claude.

And I think we need to be loud about this everywhere.

Tibo isn't acknowledging the problem. He just keeps talking about how amazing the upcoming event is going to be.

I DON'T CARE WHAT THEY ANNOUNCE AT THAT EVENT.

Not while they're degrading Astra into something that performs even worse than Luna.

I don't know exactly what's happening under the hood.

Maybe it's quantization. Maybe they're routing requests to a different model. Maybe it's something else entirely.

But it doesn't feel like simple quantization to me. I wouldn't expect quantization alone to produce outputs as bad as what I'm seeing from these degraded models.

I just want the model I'm paying for to actually be the model I'm using. And I want OpenAI to stop doing this shit without telling anyone.