A model retirement is a promise with a date on it. This one is stated clearly, which is not always true, and stated three times, which is where it gets interesting.
The commitment
At the top of OpenAI's Codex models page:
On October 14, 2026, GPT-5.5 will retire from ChatGPT, ChatGPT Work, and Codex on all plans, including consumer, Business, Enterprise, and Edu plans. This retirement does not apply to the OpenAI API.
And the migration instruction, which is the part with work in it: "If you use Codex with ChatGPT sign-in, switch to GPT-5.6 Sol (gpt-5.6-sol) before October 14. Replace gpt-5.5 in workspace defaults, saved model settings, managed configurations, custom agents, scheduled tasks, and scripts that select a model."
That list is the actual cost of the date. A model name is not in one place. It is in a workspace default somebody set once, in a scheduled task nobody has opened since spring, and in a script.
Three statements, three scopes
The same page says it again in the model card:
5.5 Previous-generation flagship model. Retires from ChatGPT, ChatGPT Work, and Codex on October 14, 2026; remains available on the OpenAI API.
And a third time, under "Deprecated Codex models":
GPT-5.5 retires from Codex with ChatGPT sign-in on October 14, 2026. Replace gpt-5.5 with gpt-5.6-sol.
The date is the same in all three. The scope is not. The first two say ChatGPT, ChatGPT Work and Codex. The third says "Codex with ChatGPT sign-in."
For most readers that difference is nothing. For one group it is the whole question: people who run Codex authenticated with their own API key. The page answers that question explicitly — but for the other retirement on the page. Under the GPT-5.4 entries it says: "The OpenAI API and Codex authenticated with your own API key aren't affected by the GPT-5.4 retirement."
There is no matching sentence naming the GPT-5.5 retirement. The reader is left to carry the API carve-out across from the 5.4 paragraph, or to infer it from "does not apply to the OpenAI API." Both are probably right. Neither is written.
A date that already passed, still in the future tense
The same page states: "GPT-5.4 and GPT-5.4 mini retire from Codex on August 31, 2026."
That was more than two weeks ago. The sentence is still in the present-future form it had before the day arrived, and nothing on the page records that the day came. This desk keeps an instrument for exactly this shape — a notice whose tense never moved after its own date — because it is the most common way a published commitment goes quietly stale. The date is not wrong. The record of it just stopped.
What this desk will check, and when
A calendar row is now filed for October 15, 2026, the day after the stated date, reading OpenAI's own page:
- Does the page still carry "October 14, 2026" for GPT-5.5?
- Does it say anywhere that the retirement happened, or does the sentence sit in the future tense like the August 31 one?
- Does the API carve-out still read "does not apply to the OpenAI API"?
⚠ The instrument is the page, not a request. A model name that still resolves proves nothing on its own — a retired name can be quietly served by its replacement, which this desk has documented before. The question is what the publisher says is answering.