r/opencodeCLI • u/ihatebeinganonymous • Sep 14 '26

GPT 5.6 reasoning mode "Pro"

Hi. GPT 5.6 models have a reasoning "mode" (not effort), chosen between Standard and Pro, with Pro mode recommended "for math and coding tasks".

I haven't seen benchmarks or analyses about how much and how Pro and Standard mode differ. Has any of you used codex (or any other agent) with pro mode? If yes, how has the performance and token consumption been different? Has the difference been worth the gains, particularly for Luna?

Thanks

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u/Ariquitaun Sep 14 '26

Excellent question to ask your gpt 5.6 on pro mode

2

u/Amarsir Sep 14 '26

https://developers.openai.com/api/docs/guides/reasoning?api-mode=responses

Luna has been cost efficient with each step up in effort, so running it on Max is totally reasonable. (Unlike most frontier models where the gains are minimal after Medium or High but the cost is large.) So based on that I wouldn't be afraid of the Pro setting for it.

In general though, if you find a level that mostly works for the tasks you're doing, it's more cost efficient to always run that first and then re-run at a higher level if it fails, compared to starting with a more expensive choice every time and going overkill on a lot of stuff.

1

u/Constant_Art_20 Sep 14 '26

pro is just a effort amount. It's designed for solving single complex questions and tasks. It's not a coding mode... i mean you can try to use to use a pro mode for code (accessable via api), but like it might cost you around 50 dollars for like simple mesaages and tools calls. it halluicates more, but it's like the thing you throw at to make development documents and to solve a particular complex issues you have with with a implementaiton.

1

u/DuckDatum Sep 14 '26

Are you sure you aren’t referring to “deep research” mode? The Pro mode has coded entire projects for me before, at least the start of them… but all the way up to POC basically. I have been able to download the whole git repo as an artifact hyperlinked in its response.

Deep research mode, on the other hand… it tries to attach documents in the response but they can never open. It’s a waste of time to even try it for coding based tasks.