GPT 5.5 just did what no other model could

In this mini episode, I break down OpenAI’s new GPT 5.5 and GPT 5.5 Pro after weeks of early testing. I walk through three real jobs I threw at the model: building an app for me to teach my second grader more advanced subtraction concepts, tackling a tech debt problem in the ChatPRD codebase, and hacking into a proprietary Bluetooth pixel display that every other model had failed me on. My verdict: higher intelligence, better efficiency, and genuinely autonomous long-running loops that change what I think is worth tackling.

What you’ll learn:

How I think about GPT 5.5 Pro’s pricing vs engineering time, and when I believe the “intelligence tax” is worth payingWhy I treat GPT 5.5 as a developer model first, and why I couldn’t find a consumer use case that justified its intelligenceThe exact prompt pattern I use to unlock a long-running autonomous subagent loopHow I got a near-six-hour autonomous run to one-shot 98% of edge cases in a migration over millions of chat threads and drop my Sentry error rate to the floorWhy I’m now throwing GPT 5.5 at tech debt, flaky tests, and security backlogs firstHow I combined a Bluetooth packet sniffer and GPT 5.5 to reverse-engineer a proprietary pixel speaker after Claude Code and GPT 5.4 both gave upHow I use the /personality command inside Codex to swap the default “baked potato” tone for something I actually enjoy working with

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In this episode, I cover:

(00:00) Introduction to GPT 5.5 testing

(00:40) What is GPT 5.5 and how much does it cost?

(03:23) Testing GPT 5.5 in ChatGPT: the intelligence overhang problem

(07:12) Moving to Codex: where GPT 5.5 really shines

(16:01) Hacking a Chinese Bluetooth speaker

(21:47) Final thoughts on GPT 5.5’s intelligence and efficiency

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Tools referenced:

• GPT 5.5 and GPT 5.5 Pro: https://openai.com/index/introducing-gpt-5-5/

• Codex: https://openai.com/codex/

• ChatGPT: https://chat.openai.com/

• Claude Code: https://claude.ai/code

• Sentry: https://sentry.io/

• Divoom MiniToo: https://divoom.com/products/minitoo

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Other references:

• OpenAI Codex Security: https://openai.com/index/codex-security-now-in-research-preview/

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Where to find Claire Vo:

ChatPRD: https://www.chatprd.ai/

Website: https://clairevo.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/clairevo/

X: https://x.com/clairevo

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Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email [email protected].

GPT 5.5 just did what no other model could

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