GPT-5.6 Sol Ultra Arrives in Codex with Subagent-Powered Ultra Mode

OpenAI

Tools official + media 3 src. ~1 min

GPT-5.6 Sol Ultra, a subagent-orchestrating variant of GPT-5.6 Sol, is rolling out to OpenAI Codex following the June 26 limited preview. The 'Ultra Mode' spawns specialized parallel subagents rather than a single sequential agent — scoring 91.9% on Terminal-Bench 2.1 versus 88.0% for GPT-5.5. The Codex CLI shipped v0.143.0-alpha.36 on July 5. Broader rollout beyond the initial partner cohort is projected for mid-to-late July.

Why it matters

Sol Ultra embeds multi-agent parallelism at the model level — a structural difference from how Claude Code and Cursor orchestrate agents — potentially setting a new ceiling on agentic coding benchmarks.

Importance: 3/5

First subagent-native coding agent from a frontier lab; SOTA on Terminal-Bench 2.1 at 91.9%.

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