# OpenAI ships GPT-6.1 Sol and dots, its always-on agents > Source: > Published: 2026-09-30 13:27:00+00:00 # OpenAI ships GPT-6.1 Sol and dots, its always-on agents GPT-6.1 Sol lists at Sonnet 5.5's price and leads it at medium effort in an independent test; dots are agents that run around the clock. Four more stories inside. OpenAI's DevDay brought two releases on Tuesday: GPT-6.1 Sol, at the same list price as Anthropic's Sonnet 5.5, and dots, agents that run around the clock on GPT-6 Astra. Pi, the minimal coding agent, now supports MCP after months of saying it didn't need it. Codex got a cloud version and a CLI refresh, though the CLI's changelog doesn't yet show everything OpenAI's recap promises. ChatGPT's $200 Pro plan buys less for new subscribers, and a new $500 tier is the only Pro plan with OpenAI's faster Ultrafast mode. And a new benchmark is tracking whether Opus 5.5 quietly got worse; it won't have an answer until late October. ## What changed this week ### OpenAI ships GPT-6.1 Sol at Sonnet 5.5's list price [OpenAI released GPT-6.1 Sol](https://openai.com/index/introducing-gpt-6-1-sol/?ref=thenewway.ai) on Tuesday and says it matches GPT-6 Astra on DeepSWE, a test of real software-engineering tasks, "at roughly one-fifth of the cost." It lists at $2 per million input tokens and $10 per million output, the same as Anthropic's Sonnet 5.5 from Monday; cached input is $0.10 against Sonnet 5.5's $0.20. [Artificial Analysis](https://artificialanalysis.ai/models/gpt-6-1-sol-medium?ref=thenewway.ai), an independent benchmarking firm, tested both at medium reasoning effort: Sol scored 48 on its Intelligence Index to Sonnet 5.5's 41, at $0.21 per task against $0.59. At maximum effort, Sonnet 5.5 leads, 56 to 52. Medium is Sonnet 5.5's default in Claude Code; Anthropic's API defaults to High, and OpenAI states no default for Sol. [OpenAI's system card](https://deploymentsafety.openai.com/gpt-6-1-sol?ref=thenewway.ai) rates Sol "Critical capability in Cybersecurity" and gives it a 1.50% rate of misrepresentation on coding tests built to provoke it, above GPT-6 Sol's 1.30%. Compare them at the effort you run. ### OpenAI launches dots, agents that run around the clock [OpenAI's dots](https://openai.com/index/introducing-dots/?ref=thenewway.ai) are "always-on agents built to handle everything," running on GPT-6 Astra with their own cloud computer. They connect to "over 4,000 apps" and are rolling out on Pro, Business Premium and Enterprise plans. Work a dot does itself "uses nothing" from your plan, [says Tibo Sottiaux](https://x.com/thsottiaux/status/2105102312167575701?ref=thenewway.ai) of OpenAI's Codex team, but a Codex task it creates draws usage "as usual." Dots aren't a coding tool. Coding work one hands to Codex counts against your plan. ### Pi adds MCP to its core after publicly rejecting it Pi, Earendil's minimal coding-agent harness, now supports MCP, the protocol agents use to reach outside tools, in its core. Its site once carried "a proud declaration that Pi does not support MCP," and [Mario Zechner](https://mariozechner.at/posts/2025-11-02-what-if-you-dont-need-mcp/?ref=thenewway.ai), one of its makers, titled a post last November "What if you don't need MCP at all?" [The team says](https://earendil.com/posts/you-said-no-mcp/?ref=thenewway.ai) a lot has improved in MCP, though not everything. Pi runs MCP tools through Codemode, a JavaScript sandbox where the agent chains tool calls in code. Using Pi? Upgrade to try it. ### OpenAI brings Codex to the cloud and refreshes its CLI Codex now runs "on a computer, remotely from a phone, or in the cloud from any device," [OpenAI's DevDay recap says](https://openai.com/index/devday-2026-recap/?ref=thenewway.ai). The CLI got a "New full-screen interface" and "ways to manage parallel work," [its developer account posted](https://x.com/OpenAIDevs/status/2104999323385929777?ref=thenewway.ai). Codex Security Cloud scans whole GitHub repositories on a schedule and prepares fixes. The recap also promises voice control and an "/agents" view; [the changelog](https://developers.openai.com/codex/changelog?ref=thenewway.ai) through version 0.159.2 lists neither. Check your version first. ### ChatGPT's $200 Pro plan buys less; a $500 tier launches OpenAI reopened its $200 Pro plan on Tuesday with "a lower usage allowance" for new subscribers, [its help page says](https://help.openai.com/en/articles/9793128-about-chatgpt-pro-tiers?ref=thenewway.ai). "The monthly price remains $200." If you already had Pro 200 at the cutoff, you keep your old allowance "through Oct 29, 2026." [The new Pro 500](https://openai.com/index/devday-2026-recap/?ref=thenewway.ai) gets "our highest usage allowance at 25 times the ChatGPT Plus allowance" and is the only Pro plan with Ultrafast, which generates tokens up to 8× faster in Codex. OpenAI gives no size for the cut. Budget for the smaller allowance after October 29. ### A new benchmark tracks whether Opus 5.5 got worse, with no verdict until around October 24 livenerf, a GitHub project, runs the same 78 questions against Opus 5.5 every day through headless Claude Code, to catch a model getting quietly worse after launch. Its README says "the first possible call is around 2026-10-24"; six of 30 days are in. It already names a limit: in validation it couldn't tell Opus 5 from Opus 5.5 at 99% confidence. It [topped Hacker News](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49901736&ref=thenewway.ai) on the question [r/ClaudeAI](https://www.reddit.com/r/ClaudeAI/comments/1wtlrnu/?ref=thenewway.ai) keeps asking. No verdict yet. Check back after October 24. ## Also worth your time - [Anthropic's Frontier Red Team says Z.ai's open-weight GLM-5.3 ships "without meaningful safeguards," with attackers bypassing them "between 64% and 100% of the time" in its tests (Anthropic)](https://www.anthropic.com/research/glm-5-3-and-the-spread-of-advanced-cyber-capabilities?ref=thenewway.ai) - [Sign in with ChatGPT lets tools such as Cognition's Devin and T3 draw on your ChatGPT plan's usage; OpenAI names six of its 16 partners (OpenAI)](https://openai.com/index/devday-2026-recap/?ref=thenewway.ai) Know someone who'd want this in their inbox? Forward it — that's how this grows. And if we got something wrong, or you think we buried the real story today, hit reply. A person reads every one. *The New Way is written with AI. It gathers the day's stories, checks them against their sources and drafts every summary. A person decides what runs and reviews every issue before we hit send.*