Agent News
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Editorial coverage of launches, infrastructure shifts, interface upgrades, and agent tooling worth tracking. Follow the story, then jump straight into the software directory and agent profiles behind each headline.
Claude Haiku 5.5 brings cheaper tokens and adjustable effort to subagents
Anthropic’s small model adds a million-token context and adjustable effort. The cheapest rates stop at 100,000 prompt tokens, and its strongest benchmark scores do not represent the default setting.
Mistral Large 4: Le Chonk previews enterprise agents before the weights arrive
Mistral's new flagship has credible coding, cyber and document results. Its public preview offers discounted tokens, but independent tests show why agent buyers should watch the whole task bill.
EmbeddingGemma 2 brings multimodal search to local AI agents
Google's 740M-parameter embedding model puts code, images, audio and video in one search space. The useful question is what developers can retrieve locally, and what they can afford to keep in the index.
Gemini 4 Argon starts with cyber defenders, not a public API
Google’s new frontier model promises a one-million-token output ceiling and long-horizon coding gains. The first access is tightly restricted; its advertised API price is for a later launch.
Holo4 uses one model across screens, code and APIs, but its two weights have different trade-offs
H Company's Holo4 models bring GUI, code and tool use into one agent stack. The 27B dense and 35B-A3B MoE models differ sharply on long tasks, weight licenses and API cost.
GPT-6.1 Sol narrows the gap to Astra, but the price claim has boundaries
OpenAI's new model reaches Work, Codex and the API before Chat. Its standard input and output rates are one-fifth of Astra's; the benchmark and caching picture is more complicated.
Claude Sonnet 5.5 keeps its predecessor’s API price, but promises cheaper finished work
Anthropic’s new Sonnet ships at $2 per million input tokens and $10 per million output tokens. The claimed savings come from using fewer tokens per task, not a lower token tariff.
MiniMax M3.1-Flash-Preview arrives in Code and Token Plan, not general pay-as-you-go
The new model ID adds adjustable reasoning effort to a 1M-context, multimodal coding model. MiniMax is keeping this preview inside its coding app and subscription plan for now.
OpenAI’s GPT-6 Sol and Luna cut API prices, but the benchmark picture is not a clean sweep
OpenAI’s new GPT-6 Sol and Luna models lower API tariffs to $2/$10 and $0.10/$0.50 per million input/output tokens. The release supplies useful benchmark figures, but the comparisons span different effort settings and independent agent-leaderboard coverage is not yet available.
Claude Opus 5.5 lowers API prices, but its benchmark story needs more than a 40% headline
Anthropic’s new flagship model starts at $4 per million input tokens and $20 per million output tokens. Its published scorecard is strong, but buyers should separate a lower tariff, a vendor-reported benchmark table, and the independent evidence now arriving.
Grok 4.7 targets long-running coding at the same $2/$6 API price
The new xAI model improves on Grok 4.6 across the company’s benchmark table, but Fable 5.1 still leads several of the rows that matter most for long agent runs.
Qwen3.8-Omni-Flash is an agent runtime for audio and video, not a talking head
Launched September 14, 2026. The API ID is `qwen3.8-omni-flash`. Speech output is still Qwen3.5-Omni.
GPT-Live-1 lands in the API as its own Live endpoint, not a Realtime upgrade
$0.05 per minute for the voice layer. Reasoning and tools stay on the backend you pick.
DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash is a 552B MoE that activates 8B on the way in
Official weights and API `deepseek-flash` shipped September 10, 2026. DeepSeek-reported benches beat V4-Pro on several agent tasks and lose Terminal-Bench 3.0/4.0 and HLE to Opus 5.0. Independent public boards do not list 4.1-Flash yet.
ChatGPT Images 2.5 splits the stack: Sketch in chat, Flare and Sunburst in the API
OpenAI’s September 8 launch puts a faster image model on ChatGPT and Codex, and gives API users two new IDs that keep GPT Image 2 token rates.
GPT-6 Astra is working in Pro and the API. Plus is still waiting. Fable 5.1 still leads the independent index.
Two days after launch, OpenAI has GPT-6 Astra live for Pro, Enterprise, Business Premium, and the API. Plus is not done. Independent Artificial Analysis v4.2 still ranks Claude Fable 5.1 first. The vendor table is now complete, and playable Astra games are up.
GPT-6 Astra is live. OpenAI calls it the most intelligent model. The vendor table is more complicated.
OpenAI launched GPT-6 Astra on September 3 with SOTA computer-use and math scores, $10/$50 API pricing, and a mixed vendor scorecard against Claude Fable 5.1.
Claude Fable 5.1: cheaper cache, quieter fallbacks, same two-tier split
Anthropic’s September 1 models keep Fable 5’s $10/$50 list price. Cache reads drop to $0.25 per million tokens, the June retention fight gets a stopgap, and Mythos 5.1 stays gated.
GLM-5.3-Flash lists at $0.15 / $0.50 — a tenth of Z.ai's own flagship
Z.ai's new 320B-A18B multimodal model ships MIT weights, a 1M context window, and API rates that make GLM-5.3 look expensive.
OpenAI Cuts GPT-5.6 Sol to $4 / $20 for Three Months
The flagship API rate is now $4 input and $20 output per million tokens, promotional through at least November 21. ChatGPT Pro, Plus, and Business allowances did not move.
Gemini 3.7 Flash is three weeks after 3.6, at half the 3.6 price
Google’s workhorse Flash cut is GA as `gemini-3.7-flash`. Vendor benchmarks, plus an introductory $0.75 / $3.75 per million tokens through 31 December 2026.
OpenAI’s Ultrafast preview runs GPT-5.6 Sol at up to 14×
Cerebras-backed, vendor-claimed 750 output tokens per second, limited preview. Standard Sol stays the public default.
ChatGPT Puts GPT-5.6 Sol on Instant, Unlimited Luna on Free, and Leaves Work and Codex Alone
OpenAI’s August 6, 2026 ChatGPT update unifies paid Instant and reasoning on a retuned Sol, moves Free and Go to Luna with a later unlimited-text window, and keeps agent surfaces on the July models.
OpenAI Cuts GPT-5.6 Luna to $0.20 Per Million Input Tokens
OpenAI has cut GPT-5.6 Luna API input pricing to $0.20 per million tokens, cut Terra by 20%, and added Sol Fast Mode for latency-sensitive work.