OpenAI has released GPT-6 Astra, a model designed to operate software rather than converse with users. It runs on hosted servers only and is currently available exclusively to organisations within the Trusted Access and Daybreak programmes.
What is actually new
The primary update for developers concerns how the system handles context. Previous versions of Codex would summarise earlier messages once the context window filled up. That process discarded details agents later required, such as why a specific fix failed or which tests ran. Astra retains notes across context windows and searches back into earlier messages and tool output. This feature ships experimentally behind a config.toml setting and becomes the Codex default in the coming weeks.
Astra can also ask the user a question while continuing work that does not depend on the answer. That removes a common agent failure where one unresolved decision stalls an entire job.
The model page lists a 1,050,000-token context window, 128,000 max output tokens and an April 30, 2026 knowledge cutoff. Input is text and image, output is text only. The reasoning.effort parameter adds two new levels above high: xhigh and max. Tool support covers computer use, hosted shell, apply patch, skills, MCP and tool search. Fine-tuning is not supported.
The benchmark picture
OpenAI reports 72.6% on OSWorld V2-Offline against 65.7% for GPT-5.6 Sol, with average task time falling from roughly 75 minutes to 40. Anthropic reports 77.9% for Claude Fable 5.1 but says it used a different OSWorld release and should not be compared directly.
Astra scores 98.6% on ARC-AGI-3. That number was produced with a Responses API harness that retains reasoning between turns and uses compaction for long contexts, and OpenAI has previously shown those settings move ARC-AGI-3 scores substantially without changing the model. The result measures the model plus the agent system.
Other reported figures include 97.6% on FrontierMath Tier 4, 95.9% on BenchCAD Vision2Code against 84.3% for Fable 5.1, and 64.6% on Terminal-Bench Science against Anthropic’s reported 52.6%. Epoch AI notes OpenAI funded FrontierMath and has exclusive access to part of it.
Coding remains the weak spot in the story. Astra scores 74.1% on DeepSWE v1.1 versus 70.8% for Sol. Meta reported 75.4% for Muse Spark 1.3 at maximum reasoning, and the public leaderboard puts Gemini 3.8 Flash and Claude Opus 5 near 74%. On a 113-task benchmark, those gaps are one or two tasks.
Cyber capability drives the access model
Astra is the first model OpenAI has designated as reaching the Critical cybersecurity threshold in its Preparedness Framework. In testing it developed exploits for hardened browsers and operating systems, and found two previously unknown V8 vulnerabilities that OpenAI says it is disclosing to maintainers.
The consequences are practical. Standard access refuses advanced cybersecurity work including exploit discovery. For API developers, a cybersecurity safety check stops a task outright rather than pausing for approval. OpenAI’s Mia Glaese warned that users outside trusted-access programs may hit slowdowns, pauses or blocks, sometimes during unrelated work.
OpenAI reports 100% on ExploitBench, an aggregate capability-coverage score rather than a pass rate, and 42.4% on ExploitGym against 30.3% for Sol, with the usual six-hour time limit removed for both.
Pricing
Astra costs $10 per million input tokens and $50 per million output, with cached input at $1.00. Requests above 272K input tokens bill at 2x input and 1.5x output for the full request. Batch and Flex run at 50%, Fast mode at 2x. Pro, Business and Enterprise users also get Astra Pro.
What it means
For people building software, the shift from summarisation to note-taking means long agent runs will stop losing failure detail. This is useful when debugging complex scripts where the reason a step failed matters more than the fact it failed. However, the model’s ability to write code remains within the standard range of current competitors, so it does not yet offer a distinct advantage for pure development tasks.
