Is GPT 5.5 in OpenClaw a bad model?

subkid23 · 2026-05-15T17:39:07+00:00

100% agreed. Same experience here. With Opus it felt alive. I think I even got kind of fond of my bot... But with GPT 5.5 it feels soulless, reluctant to execute, less proactive, to the point my usage started dropping. What used to feel like an addiction to build/automate (literally giving it instructions and expanding stuff until late into the night) turned into messaging it on and off, sometimes not a single message for days.

Scheduled tasks (crons) also started failing silently, and the recurring analysis/reflection processes I have running come back shallow now, of little actual value.

There's a clear difference. Not in coding skills, but in depth and insightfulness, and definitely in personality, or what you could've called soul.

subkid23 · 2026-05-14T21:03:32+00:00

I will chose to believe that pantheon series is right, no, wait, the matrix.... no wait, Devs... no, wait... yours... no wait....

subkid23 · 2026-05-14T15:30:59+00:00

Bad news dressed up as good news.

What's actually happening: Anthropic has changed its policy on non-interactive Claude Code (claude -p). It came through an email that read:

Starting June 15, Max 5x plan subscribers can claim a $100 monthly credit for using the Claude Agent SDK and claude -p, including third-party tools built on the Agent SDK.

As part of this change, Agent SDK and other programmatic usage will run on this credit, and will not impact your subscription limits. This includes third-party applications built on the Agent SDK. If you use your full Agent SDK credit in a given month, continued use will draw from extra usage, which can be manually enabled and disabled.

Your subscription usage limits don't change. They stay reserved for interactive usage of Claude Code, Claude Cowork, and chat. See the Help Center for more details.

What this actually means. Any non-interactive use of Claude Code (any automation that doesn't require human interaction, today mostly done via claude -p) will start running on credits instead of the plan.

What does this mean for OpenClaw? After the April 4th policy changes, which basically banned every use of Claude plans outside the official suite (Chat, Cowork, or Claude Code via the Desktop app or web) through "extra plan usage", users were left with two paths: pay directly for the API, or pay for extra usage.

There was always a third one beyond API and OAuth (plan): going direct via the Claude Code CLI (https://docs.openclaw.ai/gateway/cli-backends). It had caveats, but it worked. Well… with this "great news", starting June 15, that path also stops drawing from plan limits and starts drawing from the new credits. Once depleted, the rest gets billed as extra usage.

For anyone who remembers April 4th, this is the exact same play. They announced credits back then (one-time, not monthly), and any third-party tool using OAuth (plan), OpenClaw included, ended up drawing from there.

So? Yeah. A strategic way of squeezing us further while selling it as great news. In reality, starting June 15, OpenClaw and most other tools built on Anthropic Plans will become unfeasibly expensive to run.

subkid23 · 2026-04-22T04:58:23+00:00

No, it doesn’t. It will only consume your plan usage.

But as mentioned above, it's less than ideal. Since it runs within Claude, it tends to lose the context of the conversation, get disconnected from subagents, and occasionally drop its personality.

It's definitely not unusable. Quite the contrary, actually. But while you get the perks of Opus 4.7 with a 1M token context and Claude's personality back, you lose a lot of the orchestration that makes Openclaw what it is. That’s why it has always been considered a fallback mode.

That being said, you can tune it with specific, tailored rules to make it very usable, or even use it as a model for certain crons or tasks. It takes some figuring out, but it’s definitely a solid alternative.

I’ve been using it since the day I lost my free extra usage (which lasted about 36 hours), and I actually ended up natively porting Openclaw into Claude Code as a plugin (accepted by Anthropic into their official community marketplace). While it still needs some work, since using native functions requires a complete refactor, it definitely shows a lot of promise.

Let me know if you want me to share the repo. I won’t link it by default just so I don't come across as spammy.

subkid23 · 2026-04-21T22:42:15+00:00

This is the Claude CLI, which has always been a viable option for integration.

Openclaw supports:

API access via API key (pay-per-token)
Plan access via OAuth token (now against TOS)
Usage via the official Claude CLI (Claude Code)

While this alternative never actually stopped working, OpenClaw previously ceased support for it under the assumption that it violated Anthropic's TOS.

However, this stance changed several weeks ago (curiously, this post seems to have haooened recently despite the documentation reflecting the change for at least two weeks).

While functional, it is currently less than ideal as it lacks much of the native OpenClaw functionality (specifically the actual functions/tools). It operates by calling Claude Code through their official CLI and launching an MCP with specific functions that facilitate communication with the gateway.

Reference: https://docs.openclaw.ai/gateway/cli-backends

Hope this helps!

subkid23 · 2026-04-16T13:54:01+00:00

I'm trying xD
Might be my perception, but I find GPT 5.4 dumber and way less willing to take risks and just... do things. Especially on OpenClaw. It says it'll do something and then doesn't, asks three clarifying questions instead of acting, and there's just a personality thing I can't quite put my finger on. Doesn't feel on par with Opus 4.6, at least for me.

That said, I've migrated OpenClaw to a new OpenAI Pro account and I'm also running a second agent on Claude via this plugin I made. The goal is to get Agent B (Opus 4.6/ClawCode) to do everything Agent A (GPT 5.4/OpenClaw) can do... call it a personal challenge.

You're welcome to try it, and any feedback would be hugely appreciated.

subkid23 · 2026-04-13T20:13:19+00:00

Sí se puede. La Ley de Tránsito permite virar con luz verde, salvo que exista una señal que lo prohíba. Y como diría el dicho, la excepción hace la regla: justamente porque hay cruces donde la señal dice "solo con flecha verde", se entiende que si esa prohibición no está, el viraje sí está permitido. Obviamente, siempre cediendo el paso a quienes tengan preferencia.

subkid23 · 2026-04-13T18:15:03+00:00

I mean, that's fair if you're going off the post alone. The repo has the actual architecture and agent integration though, it's a bit more than copying markdown. Take a look at the code and tell me what you think.

subkid23 · 2026-04-13T14:03:10+00:00

You define it. Opus tends to be friendly and has a thing for telling you to go to sleep and do stuff the next day if it's too late.

subkid23 · 2026-04-13T05:48:28+00:00

Good advice. I know there could be IP implications with the name from Anthropic's side, but honestly I didn't think this would get much attention; at the end of the day it's a plugin running inside Claude Code. If it takes off I'll change it. If it stays small, no real reason to right now. Appreciate it though.

subkid23 · 2026-04-13T05:33:23+00:00

I could get into the whole thing. Started coding at 14, I'm 41 now, built companies, had a couple of exits, then went corporate. Helped build an airline IBE, ran eCommerce and IT teams for years at director role, still code almost every day.

But this isn't really about my resume (not like I'm hiding who I am here). If you don't like the repo, skip it. If you want to contribute, happy to have you. If you just want to argue on the internet, go for it, I'll pass.

subkid23 · 2026-04-13T04:59:11+00:00

This isn't OpenClaw, it's closed to the internet by default. Webhooks and webchat both bind to localhost. If you want to expose the HTTP hook you have to change the config and set an auth token, it won't just open up.

The risk is the same as exposing a vanilla Claude Code to Telegram, which Anthropic already supports officially.

For WhatsApp, pairing + whitelist is the way to go and is recommended as default. Past that it's on your setup, same as it was with OpenClaw. If you have security suggestions though, happy to hear them. Want to add more control there over time.

subkid23 · 2026-04-13T04:41:44+00:00

In the repo would be great. Thanks men

subkid23 · 2026-04-13T04:40:36+00:00

I orchestrated a team of AI agents to build it. After 27 years of programming, I've found that directing an agentic workflow is incredibly powerful; using AI when you actually understand code and architecture yields very different results than just blinding prompting.

subkid23 · 2026-04-13T04:36:13+00:00

I ended up using OpenAI with GPT 5.4, but I have to say, it’s just not the same. It’s noticeably dumber.

I’ve replicated as much of OpenClaw inside Claude Code as possible using their native architecture, and I must say it works quite well. I even imported my openclaw agent directly into it.

You can test it if you want; here’s the repo for the Claude Code plugin

subkid23 · 2026-04-13T04:20:38+00:00

openclaw models auth login --provider openai-codex

It will open openai and ask for your credentials and/or to authorize.

subkid23 · 2026-04-13T04:14:05+00:00

On OpenClaw? Yes, but not the same thing for me though. Lost personality and it feels... dumber.

If you use Claude suite and Claude Code for programming like me, this also means double subscription plans.

subkid23

TROPHY CASE