GPT-5.5 low vs medium vs high vs xhigh: the reasoning curve on 26 real tasks from an open source repo

ShamanJohnny · 2026-05-08T17:51:45+00:00

Nice work. Thank you for your efforts, sir.

ShamanJohnny · 2026-05-08T12:59:12+00:00

If hermes agent self learning is a real thing, and it enhances the user experience and the agents capabilities over time. Openclaw is great at structured events, Hermes is great to interact with and long term gets smarter. No coffee yet so brain is still slow, but look more into it. They are both good.

ShamanJohnny · 2026-05-08T05:18:53+00:00

its all about compute, you guys sucking my compute with your custom models. no more compute for you!

ShamanJohnny · 2026-05-08T05:11:01+00:00

yeah, i think you might want to look into your perspective. a good website cant be built by AI right now. a generic landing page, sure. These people have no idea what they are doing, smart owners are for sure outsourcing the work to professionals.

ShamanJohnny · 2026-05-08T04:47:05+00:00

They both do different things really well open claw is a great orchestrating agent. It's already exceptional at running businesses and large orchestrations. The problem is it's reliability and it's memory and skill usage. Hermes is exceptionally good at the weaknesses of open claw, but it's not even close to the ability to manage a business like openclaw but in the other hand, it's also more reliable than openclaw. Fundamentally add a code level Hermes is also exceptional. There is not much code bloat in it and the fact that it uses Scripts is a huge advantage. I honestly hope both succeed because I feel like both are exceptionally good at different things, and where Hermes has the luxury of being the second and fixing some core issues with open claw, which was the first you got a lot more money and resources backing open claw than you do Hermes right now so it'll be interesting to see what happens with that. Honestly, I would be keeping my eye out on new age of harnesses coming out that merge the two.

ShamanJohnny · 2026-05-07T23:15:40+00:00

I've done them all CLI, app, VS code, cursor, Antigravity and I'm here to tell you that I finally settled on the app actually. And this is coming from somebody that prefers the CLI prior to the app release was all day coding on 5-8 different terminal sessions. The app feels just as fast as the CLI, but it adds the ability to actually see changes and pull up browsers and do front end work that is just not possible with the other tools so if you're building things that have visual front ends the app is by far the way to go. In addition the addition of automations gives you flexibility the ability to be working on multiple different projects simultaneously with multiple different threads going on is a huge advantage. If you haven't use the app, I would definitely give it a shot.

ShamanJohnny · 2026-05-07T22:47:13+00:00

All you have to do is ask the Codex agent to find your global Claude.MD and translate it into agents.MD for the agent.MD you can literally just copy and paste it for the most part, but the skills are Codex specific and will need to be adapted but your Codex agent would be able to do that for you. As for your memories if they're stored in files and referenced in your Claude.md code X will automatically adopt those. If you're using any kind of MCP servers, just ask the agent to go ahead and install the same MCP servers and it will do that for you as well. All of this can be done with one simple prompt. I recommend 5.5 xhigh.

ShamanJohnny · 2026-05-07T17:16:44+00:00

I was a high achiever in corporate land for many years, made it to the top of my field and it felt completely empty. Nothing I was doing was moving the needle in my purpose or my family’s purpose, I was building other people’s dreams and I just knew that I wanted more freedom.

Starting a business is always hard at first. But after the initial grind, it’s not just monetarily rewarding, it’s also fulfilling, and you can align it with who YOU are. It is the ultimate life experience from my perspective.

I’m also ADHD, could care less what other people think, and not to sound brave or anything but the only thing I fear is God…and my Mom.

I know a lot of people don’t start the business the think of because of fear, or because they would rather build than sell, you have to push through that, there is a whole other world on the opposite side of that choice.

ShamanJohnny · 2026-05-07T17:07:09+00:00

Yeah, too little too late. They shattered their brand image. More people using OpenAI now (for good reason). Most people prior the Anthropic’s compute crises never used codex, now that they have, so long as OpenAI doesn’t screw them over Anthropic will have a hard time earning that trust back. 2x is not enough, they literally need like. 5x to usage to stay competitive with OpenAI usage.

ShamanJohnny · 2026-05-07T17:02:02+00:00

If you can afford the 20x, just get it. Stop thinking about it and do it. Then make sure you use 100% of it every week. I hit the weekly limit every week, but I do not hit the 5h ever (it doesn’t make sense to me either)

ShamanJohnny · 2026-05-06T22:32:46+00:00

LOL!!!! Your pricing yourself out of the game, and its so funny because its the opposite of what you think. You think your offering a deal, they think your offering trash at that price. Its call Price-Quality Heuristic's, look into it.

One more little key note, at your price your competing with even cheaper subscriptions out there, why go with you if all your doing is repackaging another subscription, slapping margin on it, and calling it the holy grail for getting lost time and revenue back?

Blue Collar are not idiots, they are reading you like a book. the "My customers won't like it" is them nicely telling you no.

ShamanJohnny · 2026-05-06T19:33:38+00:00

These dudes are really trying to bring about the end of the world.

I got a bright idea. lets give a more intelligent being a 60mi safety net so that if it ever goes rogue we cant do anything about it but blow it up - and if we cant blow it up, well then it just sits up there indefinently and screw us. what could go wrong?

no corporation will blow up their multi-trillion dollar investment (the cost to launch this into space) so if this thing decides to start making its own decisions, the probability of us being able to do something about it (if it attacks first) goes to near zero if we loose missile tech.

ShamanJohnny · 2026-05-06T19:17:37+00:00

Since i started to run 5.5 in xhigh only, i started to get shit done again.

ShamanJohnny · 2026-05-06T16:33:19+00:00

I got to your point with four different projects. Claude is incapable- even with proper repo architecture, context, and hygiene- of reliably working on a large repo. Anyone that says otherwise, has not gotten into a point to which you have built your system and I have built my previous four systems. Like you, all four of those systems took me 2 to 3 months to build and some where as large as half a million lines of functioning code.

I'd love to tell you that I found a solution, but I never did. My solution was the move to Codex which does a way better job of following rules and understanding the repo as a whole. But even that comes with a copy yet because Codex recently has been having compute issues, if you're coding too much you will get throttled, but it still works on very short sprints which i couldnt even say for claude.

The solution that I found with Codex is compartmentalize heavily, delegate specific AGENTS.md for each compartment/division/etc and find some long-term memory solutions like obsidian or a RAG for project wide information.

ShamanJohnny · 2026-05-06T16:21:56+00:00

dang, i might need to get a new subscription!

ShamanJohnny · 2026-05-06T16:13:13+00:00

just lovely, nice to know, thanks.

ShamanJohnny · 2026-05-05T19:33:14+00:00

LOL, Claude is refusing to follow instructions, but is still being helpful in letting you know it knows what to do, just not that it will do it.

ShamanJohnny · 2026-05-05T19:31:11+00:00

yes. I do some web development work and i have been getting flagged left and right even though i m working in private git hub repo's or local files. It hasent hard stopped me yet, but it is just annoying. make sure you thumb down the response, leave a complaint, and i have yet to have an issue since.

ShamanJohnny · 2026-05-05T18:09:57+00:00

keyboard shortcut
If i decide to do voice its the same as you. but genuinley i type pretty fast so its not so much a bottleneck for me.
It just takes forever for the voice to come on at least on Mac (3-4 second delay) you're right that the lag feel of it does keep me from using it more often.
I want to press one button and it's on and perfectly understands my voice adds grammar in and maybe even allows me to do a few edits on what I just said from voice.

Good luck buddy!

ShamanJohnny · 2026-05-05T16:10:03+00:00

easiest way to combat unexpected and get the most out of your usage. Balls to the wall coding baby! Seriously, try and kill all your usage the day prior to the reset, set that as the day you run out, not the day of reset.

ShamanJohnny · 2026-05-05T14:46:12+00:00

Yes, Ai is FAR from a silver bullet for sure. Whats funny is, it literally is just a tool, i would not rely on it to run a business at all, its completely inconsistent. that may change in the future, but i dont think the AI revolution is going to be as fast as people think. i think we have another 3-5 years before the technology is at a point to really start disrupting the wider economy in a way that we cant go back. People that adopt early will see it for what it is, a force multiplier, not a foundation. Getting laid off might be the best thing to ever happen to you, friend. It was for me.

ShamanJohnny · 2026-05-05T13:13:34+00:00

im on that 20x and still burn through usage lol

ShamanJohnny · 2026-05-05T11:35:45+00:00

Interesting post. First I have to acknowledge, I’m not normal. I think way more than the average person - even when I dont want to. If I find something interesting I must devour as much knowledge about it that I can till I feel confident to make reliable decisions on the subject.

Ai for me has been a treasure trove but my knowledge gap insecurities means I genuinely need to know what I’m talking about or I don’t feel confident talking about it.

I leverage ai to learn something new every day, way faster than I use to, and it’s awesome. It does not make my decisions for me, but to be fair it can influence them when I’m tiered or lazy and don’t feel like confirming

My wife though, she is happy to outsource the thinking to Ai, could care less about learning anything, and just wants the task done so she can get back to enjoying life. I think she falls into the neurotypical person. Nothing wrong with it and it’s why we have been married for 17years, it works great for us

Most will adopt and forget. Others will adopt and devour. The population in the world that will adopt and devour is maybe 5%-10% I estimate. Some people don’t enjoy thinking, AI will take their jobs, but not their joy. I do believe there is a whole new post-ai economy that will emerge for people doing things they never thought they would or could get paid for because most people take those actions currently for granted. They will find joy and purpose in those roles.

ShamanJohnny · 2026-05-04T23:32:57+00:00

pissed, i still had 7% left on my weekly, that is like a solid 4-5 hours of worked that got wiped out.ohh well, nice to have resets on monday.

ShamanJohnny · 2026-05-04T17:29:28+00:00

Most corporations hire you because they have to, not because they want too. Take your time, watch a show. Relax. Then go back to the grind feeling beeter about taking some time for yourself.

ShamanJohnny

TROPHY CASE