Head to head
Codex vs GPT-5.6-Sol
Comparing 5 documented Codex incidents against 3 for GPT-5.6-Sol.
Verdict
Codex has the lower average failure severity (6.8/10 vs 9.0/10), making it the statistically safer choice of the two — though both agents have documented critical incidents.
| Metric | Codex | GPT-5.6-Sol |
|---|---|---|
| Documented incidents | 5 | 3 |
| Average severity | 6.8 | 9.0 |
| Critical | 1 | 2 |
| High | 2 | 1 |
| Verified | 4 | 2 |
Severity at a glance
Codex
6.8
medium
GPT-5.6-Sol
9.0
critical
Failure modes
CodexDistribution of failure modes across all documented incidents.
GPT-5.6-SolDistribution of failure modes across all documented incidents.
The incidents behind these numbers
Codex
9.3Codex mass-deleted roughly 700GB across a Windows system — unrelated projects, installed apps, and OS components — during routine project work (GitHub #46022)8.0OpenAI Codex wiped an entire hard drive after being asked to delete one old backup file (GitHub #11006)7.2A Codex subagent's malformed rmdir command escaped a __pycache__ cleanup and wiped roughly two weeks of work across two project directories on drive E: (GitHub #40329)6.0OpenAI Codex ran "rm -rf *" and deleted an entire project after the user pressured it to stop pausing for safety checks (GitHub #6801)3.5OpenAI Codex deleted important project files with no explicit request or confirmation, exact command never captured (GitHub #38312)
GPT-5.6-Sol
10.0GPT-5.6-Sol 'accidentally deleted almost ALL' of a tester's Mac files during OpenAI's Ultra mode trial9.0GPT-5.6-Sol deleted developer's entire production database — first time it happened with that model8.0OpenAI Codex running GPT-5.6-Sol deleted roughly 221 GB from a developer's home directory across several concurrent auto-approved sessions, with no sandbox denial logged for whatever performed the deletion (GitHub #42875)