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The developer's guide (https://developers.openai.com/api/docs/guides/latest-model) has some interesting semantic tips for using the model:

> Intent understanding: GPT-5.6 can better infer the user’s underlying goal and intended level of work without you specifying every step. Continue to state important constraints, approval boundaries, and success criteria explicitly.

> Original image detail: GPT-5.6 preserves the original dimensions of images sent with original or auto detail instead of resizing them to a patch budget or pixel-dimension limit.

> Use shorter prompts: In internal evaluations, replacing long, explicit system prompts with minimal prompts improved scores by roughly 10–15%, while reducing total tokens by 41–66% and cost by 33–67%.

> Avoid generic brevity instructions: GPT-5.6 is more sensitive than GPT-5.5 to instructions such as “Be concise,” “Keep it short,” or “Use minimal text.”

> Control warmth: GPT-5.6 does not become meaningfully better when prompted to be broadly friendlier or more empathetic.

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> Use shorter prompts: In internal evaluations, replacing long, explicit system prompts with minimal prompts improved scores by roughly 10–15%, while reducing total tokens by 41–66% and cost by 33–67%.

When has this ever not been the case? I don't think this is a GPT 5.6 specialty!

Information density of the prompt is the most important factor in my experience.

And interestingly, LLMs seem particularly bad at writing prompts for other LLMs for this reason (you can guide them to be more dense, just speaking by default).

Conciseness is usually a byproduct of information density though.

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