OpenAI Launches GPT-5.6 with Programmatic Tool Calling in Three Service Tiers

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OpenAI has released GPT-5.6 as generally available, offering three service tiers named Sol, Terra, and Luna. The release introduces Programmatic Tool Calling, which allows AI agents to write and execute lightweight programs between tool calls without routing intermediate data through the context window, reducing token usage and model calls. Early adopter Ploy.ai reported switching from Claude Opus 4.8 to GPT-5.6 Sol cut per-build costs from $3.06 to $2.22 while halving task completion time. The launch is part of Issue 21 of The Agentic Engineer, a weekly newsletter covering AI agent development. The same issue also highlights Tencent open-sourcing hardware-isolated KVM sandboxes and Anthropic's modular system for restricting dangerous knowledge.

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