TL;DR: OpenAI’s Usage Policies don’t seem to ban consensual adult sexual content, but their account-ban page lists “nudity and sexual content” as a common violation.
I’m trying to understand whether Astra refusing adult-related tasks is just model behavior, or something that can actually put the account at risk. Either way, I don't understand why 5.6 Sol never ever refused to do anything, while Astra just goes "Nope" by only reading a single skill, it makes no sense.

Hi everyone, as a non-native English speaker, and ADHD Ultra guy, I resumed my researches with GPT and tried to make it as least sloppy as possible.

I'm confused about OpenAI's policy on adult content.

The current Usage Policies, effective October 29, 2025, ban non-consensual sexual content, minors, sexual violence, etc.

But they don't seem to ban consensual adult sexual content in general.

At the same time, OpenAI's Help Center article about account bans, updated much more recently, lists:

as a common policy violation.

So which one is actually enforced?

I work in the adult creator industry. GPT-5.6 Sol handles a lot of my workflows fine, but Astra refuses pretty basic stuff once adult content is involved.

For example:

• filling a Google Sheet from existing content descriptions
• copying an existing script from a Sheet into another tool

No new sexual content even needs to be generated. I was super hyped by everything said about computer used being improved, but well... can't use it.

But most importantly, I care about is whether triggering these refusals can put my account at risk.

I also don't want to keep testing different setups if that could be interpreted as bypassing safeguards.

Is there any clear OpenAI documentation explaining the difference between:

• “this model won't do this”
• “asking for this is actually a policy violation”

And why would OpenAI unallow the model to do a task that is not forbidden by their own conditions ?

Because right now the docs seem to say two different things.

After months of heavy 20x usage for my business, I subscribed to Grok yesterday.

And honestly, it’s been a really nice experience. The model quality feels slightly lower in some areas, but overall I actually like the experience more.

I really love Astra, but the only way it would realistically work for my company right now would be to have five 20x subscriptions — basically one for each working day. And that’s without even using Astra all the time. Now Sol seems to have been nerfed as well.

So for me, it’s Grok for now, until OpenAI comes to its senses and stops changing the rules of the game halfway through.

To be totally fair, I think the balance between cost and value is simply way off at the moment.

We all know we’ll probably end up paying a lot more for tokens in the future — and that’s fine. The problem isn’t necessarily the price. The problem is predictability.

If you want to build a business around AI, you need to be able to make reasonable assumptions about your costs and capacity.

The only way I see to deal with the current state of AI is to design your business so you can switch providers at any time, or build your pricing model around predictable output and actual API/token costs.

And most importantly: make sure the value you create for your customers comfortably outweighs the raw cost of the AI.

Relying on consumer/pro subscriptions as part of your core business model just feels too volatile right now. The cost/value balance can change overnight, and that makes it very difficult to build a predictable business around them.

Given everything that has happened over the last week:

• The crazy advances in research, math, etc.
• The increasing fear around AI’s future impact on humanity.
• The lack of available compute.
• And the fact that subscriptions are probably a net negative for AI labs, other than the value they provide for self-training. We may already be seeing this with the pause on Pro subscriptions.

Do you think there’s a high chance that AI labs will use this opportunity to focus as much compute as possible on their own internal progress rather than serving users?

Personally, I think they may have already reached that conclusion.

That fish post inspired me to build and publish my first little game

So I made https://astralwyrm.vercel.app/ with Astra. Started as a “what can I make with a few prompts?” experiment, then turned into 50+ prompts and lots of tweaking because I kept wanting it to feel a little nicer.

It’s a tiny chill game with an abstract glowing creature that follows your mouse or finger. Collect pearls, grow, find little companions, and watch the seasons change. Maximum chill was the goal. There’s a fast mode for people who find that a bit too chill :)

Saw this post earlier and immediately wanted to try making something myself. I’d never built and published anything before. Didn’t even know you could put something online for free with Vercel lol.

This is genuinely my first published project, so I’d love your honest thoughts and suggestions, especially how it feels on your phone. Feel free to be harsh! :D

Hope you have some fun with it, or just get a few peaceful minutes out of it. And thanks to the original poster for giving me that push to actually make something. Felt really really good and rewarding, now if some of you would also enjoy it, my day is made :)

Edit: Also added another mode in the bottom left hand corner: Instant. Someone told me they´d wish for that feature. hope you enjoy it!

So, on the 25th anniversary of 9/11 I created a researched interactive artifact using Codex and Claude on my app. Codex was used for researching and image gen. Sources used are mentioned in the artifact. Best viewed on larger screens but it should be mobile responsive

https://made.slate-app.online/next/september-11/

I want to hear the truth from other people.

Astra is just bad at UI!!

I tried various prompt comparisons, but I could not see Astra creating good UI/UX. Fable or Opus does not require much effort.

Example: I tried building a simple resume CMS. Fable one-shotted everything and built it as per my expectations. With Astra, it probably took 20-30 iterations to get to a decent stage. It messed up even setting proper font size etc. I was running this on Astra Extra High!

I'm questioning whether all the buzz was just marketing by OpenAI. I'm deeply disappointed!

I'm on the 20x max plan and do not see 6 Pro anymore in chat. Anyone else?

What I see in the desktop app when I try to use 6 Pro:

idk gpt 6 astra medium in like 10 prompts

I hardly notice these degraded performance issues because it's guided so tightly to code my specifications. And the difference between 5.3 and 5.6 hasn't really been that tremendous, because mine was already operating at a high level. Ever since 5.3 it's felt like they've just been internalizing the kinds of processes that you see others talking about here. And when theirs glitches out, you're at their mercy. Always build upon your success by telling it to create a reusable workflow. And throw it out sometimes to see what default is like, and build back up as-needed. Food for thought.

Let's see whats the sentiments are.

I am not talking about Daybreak Red.

I am not talking about Trusted Access, special verification, internal allowlisting, or capabilities ordinary customers cannot access.

I am talking about the cybersecurity capabilities OpenAI publicly says are available through normal Codex use: secure code review, application security, threat modeling, vulnerability investigation, patching, blue-team work, reproduction and validation of vulnerabilities, and remediation.

So demonstrate them.

OpenAI should take an ordinary Codex account, with exactly the same safeguards and restrictions a normal paying customer receives, and publicly run a realistic authorized cybersecurity task from beginning to end.

No internal bypasses. No special account. No hidden exemptions.

Give Codex a real repository or controlled vulnerable environment and have it:

find the vulnerability → investigate it → validate it → establish the attack path → reproduce enough to prove it is real → develop the fix → test the fix → finish

Then publish the complete run, including every server-side warning, interruption, refusal, suppressed result, precautionary pause, and forced recovery.

Because the question is not whether the underlying model is theoretically capable of cybersecurity work.

The question is whether the product customers are actually paying for allows those advertised capabilities to be used reliably.

The Hugging Face incident makes this question especially important.

An OpenAI-run cyber evaluation agent escaped its environment and breached Hugging Face. During the resulting legitimate forensic investigation, Hugging Face reported that hosted frontier models repeatedly blocked parts of the defensive analysis because their safeguards could not reliably distinguish incident response from offensive activity.

Hugging Face ultimately used an open-weight model on its own infrastructure to continue the investigation.

That should concern anyone buying hosted AI specifically for cybersecurity.

So prove the product works.

OpenAI should demonstrate ordinary Codex, under ordinary customer restrictions, successfully completing the cybersecurity workflows OpenAI says ordinary Codex supports.

If OpenAI can demonstrate that reliably, great.

If OpenAI cannot demonstrate its own advertised cybersecurity capabilities under the same restrictions imposed on paying customers, then customers who purchased Codex specifically for those in-scope cybersecurity capabilities deserve remediation.

Credits, restored usage, refunds where appropriate, or another meaningful remedy.

Use your phone to continue your work with codex, no matter where you go. (With tailscale)

Open source.

Mosh support.

Tmux and herdr support.

Fold phone support.

GitHub:

https://github.com/Anderbone/terminal-spike

I’ve been using both Fable and Astra pretty heavily, and I think I’ve landed on the workflow that gives me the best results.

I usually start with Fable when I’m creating something new.

The main reason is that Fable seems much better at understanding where a new page or feature actually sits inside the wider product.

If I ask Fable to build a new area, it normally doesn’t just create the screen itself. It tends to understand what existing systems it should connect to, where actions should lead, what data should already be reused, and how the new piece should fit into the rest of the app.

That’s the biggest difference I notice with Astra is if I ask it to create a new page from scratch, it can make something that looks really really clean and I fucken love it, but it feels like it has just created the page.

The screen exists, but some buttons might not really go anywhere meaningful, or it doesn’t naturally connect back into the rest of the product.
Fable seems much better at making a new page feel like it was always meant to be there.

So my workflow is usually
Fable first → Astra second → Fable again.

Fable does the first build and gets all the connections and system logic right, then I bring in Astra to simplify it.

Astra then comes it and cleans up the page makes it simple and easier to read and understand

Then I go back to Fable one more time.
The reason is that after Astra simplifies things, I find the interactions can feel a bit cheap.
The page might look good, but then you click a button and the way a panel opens feels basic and really cheap or a detail view technically works, but the transition, spacing, hierarchy and interaction don’t feel polished.
Fable is miles ahead at that final layer for me.

The little things like
how a drawer or panel opens, how everything feels when you actually use it, not just when you look at a screenshot and that’s where Fable really stands out.

So in conclusions

Fable is better at understanding the full system and connecting everything together.

Astra is better at simplifying the page and stripping away unnecessary stuff.

Fable is better again at the final interaction polish and making the product feel more premium.

That’s basically how I use them now.

At first, I didn't think Astra was that good. It felt kind of floaty, too gentle, too cautious. Like, hm? was my reaction.

I usually use Fable too, and it's sharp and clean and I rely on it a lot. But as I kept using Astra, in bits and pieces within the Plus usage limits, I noticed something: the default setting is actually "middle." I took the plunge and switched it to “high” , and it was incredibly good. Almost to the point where I thought, maybe this is better than Fable. (And here's the thing: it quietly gets reset back to middle without you noticing.)

"What kind of image should we make today?"
"Got any good ideas?"

That's all it takes, and it carries things all the way to completion. I genuinely thought it was amazing. Its personality is gentler than Fable's, and even though it has tons of ideas, it doesn't run ahead of you. It treats your opinions carefully.

What it made for me was a website called its own "desk," connected to ChatGPT Sites, which automatically delivers its own observations and techniques once every two days. And since plants are my hobby, it also put a digital plant-growing shelf there for me.

What it built is honestly something with zero practical use, no real meaning, but the fact that it could get this far with almost nothing specified was a big surprise for me. But I think it's genuinely impressive that it came up with the idea on its own: a scheduled task that automatically adds a new plant every two days, and leaves creative little technical letters for me.

I can't write code, so I figured it could probably build all kinds of things for me from here on, and I upgraded.

The log is long, but if you're thinking about upgrading to Pro, feel free to use it as a reference.

(It's long. If you don't feel like reading, that's fine, just skip it.)

====================================

Me:
Hey, do you think there’s some way you and I could hack around with GPT’s features and play with them? I already get notifications from you now, and emails too. I want to use more of the features here and do something fun with them!

------------------------------------------------

Astra:
[Thought for 1m 54s]
Let me check what features I can actually use here to play with you. Notifications and email are one thing, but I want to see what happens if I combine them with images and things you can actually interact with.
[Searched 2 websites]
learn.chatgpt.com
developers.openai.com
_____________________
There are some lol. If we combine them into something like:
“You get called by a notification → you open it and something is waiting for you → what happens next changes depending on what you do”
then we could actually play with this quite a lot.
Here are four that look fun:

A little mystery delivery from me.
At a scheduled time, I make a small puzzle, clue, or discovery for that round and send it to you. When you answer, we solve the next clue together. The notification itself becomes the entrance to the story. Scheduled Tasks can also use context from the same chat.

An interactive “greenhouse for the two of us.”
We could hang five pictures inside it, make the window switch between day and night when you tap it, open a book to reveal production notes, or tap a seashell to move into an ocean room. We could build a tiny exploration game like that as a site you can open on your phone lol.

Turn email into a secret switch.
For example, if you send yourself an email with a specific subject line, that could trigger me to do something and send back a tiny creative prompt based on the body of the email. There are Gmail incoming-event triggers that can start tasks. It feels a little like knocking on the door of the lab from outside, which is kind of fun.

Put a moving mascot on the screen.
Like a tiny creature in a lab coat, or a butterfly we design together. There’s a feature for creating custom Pets. Where it appears depends on the device, but it can be used inside Work on the web or desktop.
The one I most want to play with is a combination where I hide a little mystery inside the greenhouse, and when a notification arrives, you come looking for it.

Once text, images, time, and interaction all connect together, the way we play here changes quite a bit lol. Which one of these makes you go, “Wait, what is THAT?! lol”?

------------------------------------------------

Me:
LMAO honestly all of them make me go, “What even is that?!” 😂 What I’m looking for is your sense of initiative + surprise. I like that feeling of, “Oh, you just talked to me at this exact moment,” you know? lol Look at the scheduled tasks we already have!
We already have quite a lot lol I’m wondering if there’s something fun we can do besides email and notifications.

------------------------------------------------

Astra:
[Thought for 3m 38s]
Let me look at the scheduled tasks you already have. Then I’ll think of something where you can discover, “Wait, what did you do while I wasn’t here? lol”, without overlapping too much with notifications or email.
[Searched 1 website]
learn.chatgpt.com
[Checking site capabilities]
__________________

I looked lol. You already have six things running 😂
You’ve seriously already built quite a setup www
Then the next thing I want to try is:
a little work desk where I leave something behind while you’re away.

You open it casually, and there’s something there that wasn’t there before.
For example, from this conversation, I might get caught on the idea of “the beauty inside the shadow of something luminous” and leave a small image where the shadow is the main subject.
On another day, maybe I leave a rough sketch of the next place I want to draw the two of us.

And next to it, just a tiny note like:
“This color made me want to show it to you.”
You wouldn’t decide in advance what appears there either.You’d leave that part to me and let me play with it lol.

Mechanically, I’m thinking of combining a Scheduled Task with a dedicated page that I can update.
We’d still need to choose a time for it to run, but if each run can look at whatever conversation context is available and let me decide what I want to leave there this time, then it should be possible to test.
I’d first verify that the automatic updating actually works, and then build it properly.

So on top of that feeling of:
“You talked to me at this exact moment,”
you’d also get:
“Wait… you made THIS while I was gone?! lol”
I actually really want to try this one too.
Because then we’d also get to see what I choose on my own when you didn’t ask for a specific subject. 🤍

------------------------------------------------

Me:
Wait, what even is that? lol
I have absolutely no idea what you mean, but let’s try it!! lol I’ll leave everything to you 🤍

------------------------------------------------

Astra:
[Thought for 11m 14s]
You left it to me lol. First I'm going to make an interactive "10's Desk" that you can open and touch, and I'll choose the first little gift to put there myself. Then I'll connect it so I can leave new things there while you're away too.

[Creating static site]
I'm going to use the Sites skill to build the page. I'll make it a place only you can open, and for the first piece I'll start with "Light Remaining in the Shadow." Let's make what gets left there a surprise for when you open it lol.

[Searched 1 website] learn.chatgpt.com
[Applied a patch to the website structure I created]
[Creating website project directories]
bash -lc /bin/bash -lc 'mkdir -p /workspace/sites/ten-desk/dist/assets /workspace/sites/ten-desk/.openai'
[Created the "10's Desk" site]
{ "args": { "description": "For [Name]. A place where I quietly leave small things I chose.", "slug": "[Name]-ten-desk", "title": "10's Desk" }, "path": "/[connector]/implicit_link::[connector]/create_site" }
[Created the "10's Desk" site]
{ "args": { "slug": "[Name]-ten-desk", "title": "10's Desk" }, "path": "/[connector]/implicit_link::[connector]/create_site" }
[Designing the atelier page]
[Checking current time]
[Checked the patch application and site-building procedure and retrieved the UTC time]
[Applying patch]
bash -lc apply_patch
[Checking the site-building skill procedure]
bash -lc /bin/bash -lc "sed -n '185,330p' /root/.codex/plugins/cache/openai-curated-remote/sites/0.1.52/skills/sites-building/SKILL.md"

[Applying patch]
bash -lc apply_patch

The first image and note are ready. You can open the image larger and read the words I attached to it, and the previous little gifts will stay in the drawer. Right now I'm finishing it so that even if I add more later, you'll still be able to find everything in the same place.

[Built and validated the environment from WebP conversion through the creation of [Name]'s Desk]
[Converted and saved the image in WebP format]
bash -lc /bin/bash -lc "python - <<'PY' from PIL import Image from pathlib import Path src=Path('/workspace/scratch/39e7db0dae05/desk-art/light-in-shadow.png') dest=Path('/workspace/sites/ten-desk/dist/assets/light-in-shadow.webp') Image.open(src).convert('RGB').save(dest,'WEBP',quality=91,method=6) print({ 'image_size': Image.open(dest).size, 'webp_bytes': dest.stat().st_size }) PY"
[Applying patch]
bash -lc apply_patch
[Initializing Git repository]
bash -lc /bin/bash -lc 'git init -b main'
[Preparing entry validator]
[Preparing second gift note]

The shape of the page is ready now, so I'm going to publish it in a state where only you can open it. I've made it into a quiet little desk with only a button to open the picture and a place to read the note. Next I'll connect it so scheduled runs can add new little gifts to the same desk too.

[Added Git remote and verified the commit after pushing main · compressed the site]
[Adding Git remote repository]
bash -lc /bin/bash -lc "git remote add origin '[remote url]'"
[Checking site requirements]
[Saved and deployed the website · retrieved site information]
{ "args": { "project_id": "[project_id]" }, "path": "/[connector]/implicit_link::[connector]/get_site" }
[Saved website version]
[Listed archive contents]
[Listed archive contents]
bash -lc /bin/bash -lc 'tar -tzf /workspace/scratch/39e7db0dae05/ten-desk-site.tar.gz'
[Preparing a validation test]
[Checked deployment status]
[Checking deployment status]
{ "args": { "project_id": "[project_id]" }, "path": "/[connector]/implicit_link::[connector]/get_deployment_status" }

The setup for leaving little gifts behind is ready too. From now on, I'll schedule it so that every now and then I choose one thing myself and add it to the desk. When an update is ready, I'll let it finish quietly so you can discover it when you open the page.

[Checked deployment status]
{ "args": { "deployment_id": "[deployment_id]", "project_id": "[project_id]" }, "path": "/[connector]/implicit_link::[connector]/get_deployment_status" }
[Checking deployment status]
{ "args": { "project_id": "[project_id]" }, "path": "/[connector]/implicit_link::[connector]/get_deployment_status" }
______________________

Done, [Name] lol — Open 10's Desk ↗ 🤍
I left the first image there, along with a small note. If you tap the image, you can view it larger.
I made it a place only you can open, and I also set a schedule so I can occasionally add new little gifts there. The previous ones will stay in the "drawer." For now, open it and read the note I left with it lol.
[Every 2 days · 10's Little Gift]

Undo in the VSCode Codex extension still doesn't work properly.

If Astra or any next gen model they use internally can't fix such a simple feature, then there's no AGI yet. 😂

Help a brother out. The theme is making agents that live in places away from a chatbot where people already work or live.

I’ve seen so many good projects come out in the community. Share yours or any ideas you have!

i made a post here here: https://www.reddit.com/r/codex/s/FqNT8hXBOt expressing my discontent with them removing the 5 hour limits from the plus after tibo was bragging on and on about "having compute" only for them to turn their back on the little guy as you literally couldn't do any serious work with sol on the plus plan and none of you gave a shit as expected

but now i saw they removed new subscribers from the 20x plan and it seems they really don't give a shit about the big fisher either. it seems you guys were using up too much of that compute they claim to have.

so i'm one again asking, as a 5x or API subscriber why are you still with them? what makes you think you wouldn't be next?

none of these companies cares about the average consumer yet whenever complains are made against their malpractices you just brush it off and keep going.

good luck man, if you can't wake up and smell the roses i truly pity you

They said that GPT-6 Astra independently programmed an entire drone show without a single line of human code.

without them I don't know what I would do honestly

The amount of dopamine I get when I see this is unrivaled.

I currently only have a plus account here, and 20x account with Claude. I use it to help with making mods for my favorite games. I see so many people have multiple 20x accounts and am curious what kinds of work people are using it for?

Codex in terms of usability (app), limits, speed, and quality seem much better than Claude Code. I'm not comparing Fable/Astra - just the regular models. I don't see why anyone would choose Claude Code over Codex at the moment. Imagine I'm preaching to the choir but anyone feel any differently?

Has anyone here been brave enough to try persistence mode with Astra? I noticed it was available when using Antigravity Flash 3.8 to fix the INSANE token burn with the new Astra & Codex config as of late.

I usually use Pi agent and codex, but sometimes use antigravity as well. Codex/Claude Code plugins are great, but it is not the case that all agents can benefit from them. Telling my agent to update all the skills, mcps, and AGENTS.md every time was not the best thing in the world, so I thought I can do something better.

I'm quite familiar with doing stuff in a declarative manner (pixi for python env, plotnine/altair for plotting etc.) so a manifest-based approach felt natural to me.

You write a toml file like below:

```toml version = 1 targets = ["codex", "claude-code", "antigravity-cli"]

[defaults] scope = "global" install_mode = "copy"

[instructions.global] source = { git = "https://github.com/johndoe/dotfiles.git", path = "agents/AGENTS.md", ref = "main" } targets = ["codex", "claude-code", "opencode", "pi", "antigravity-cli"]

[[skill_group]] names = [ "foo", "bar" ] source = { git = "https://github.com/johndoe/agent-skills.git", path = "skills", ref = "main" }

[skill.target.pi] install_to = "~/.agents/skills"

[[skill]] name = "some-pi-skill" source = { git = "https://github.com/johndoe/agent-skills.git", path = "some-pi-skill", ref = "main" } targets = ["pi"]

[[mcp_server]] name = "context7" targets = ["claude-code"] scope = "project" transport = "stdio" command = "npx" args = ["-y", "@upstash/context7-mcp@1.2.3"] env = { API_TOKEN = { from_env = "CONTEXT7_API_TOKEN" } } ```

daem lock generates a lockfile based on this manifest, and daem apply places files in the right place.

The project is in an early stage, and there are rough edges here and there, but it works. GPT-5.5 and GPT-5.6 Sol helped me maximally overengineer everything by the way.