A pelican for GPT-5.5 via the semi-official Codex backdoor API

A pelican for GPT-5.5 via the semi-official Codex backdoor API 23rd April 2026 GPT-5.5 is out. It’s available in OpenAI Codex and is rolling out to paid ChatGPT subscribers. I’ve had some preview access and found it to be a fast, effective and highly capable model. As is usually the case these days, it’s hard to put into words what’s good about it—I ask it to build things and it builds exactly what I ask for! There’s one notable omission from today’s release—the API: API deployments require different safeguards and we are working closely with partners and customers on the safety and security requirements for serving it at scale. We’ll bring GPT‑5.5 and GPT‑5.5 Pro to the API very soon. When I run my pelican benchmark I always prefer to use an API, to avoid hidden system prompts in ChatGPT…