Observation: GPT 5.6 Writes Its Own Plans, No Longer Needs Manual Chunking

andrew_n_carr · x · 2026-08-09

Developer @andrewncarr shared observations on the evolution of GPT models' capabilities in coding tasks:

During the GPT 5.3 to 5.4 era, it was absolutely critical to use a manual plan mode. The models couldn't cut it unless carefully guided one chunk at a time with several rounds of review. However, in version 5.6, the model mostly writes its own plans and no longer seems to need manual guidance. This leap in autonomous planning raises high expectations for the next generation of models.

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