# Astra by OpenAI 319 Hacker News commenters recommended Astra by OpenAI and 179 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 7 of 13 months; owners who said how long report a median of 0.25 years (10 owners). **Verdict:** A frontier AI model praised for computer use, 3D reasoning, solving hard technical problems and concise, token-efficient output; critics say its coding is still sloppy and it lacks taste. ## Why people recommend it - Strong computer use, 3D reasoning (4 comments): "much much better computer use and 3d modeling capabilities; better subagent orchestration; better and more reliable tool use; slightly worse coding" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49688935)) "it is impressive at computer use and 3D reasoning, and fails in similar ways to 5.6 Sol at similar rates when it comes to coding" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49588745)) "Astra was the only one that seemed to understand that displacement should happen less the further something is in the distance." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49794584)) - Solves hard technical problems (6 comments): "it both identified and thoroughly explained to me several discrepancies and filing nuances that I never before would have ever learned about" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50187483)) "it went ahead and disassembled it, found some undocumented APIs, figured out how they worked and gave me sample code to call them." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49791466)) "Eventually, by walking through them, it proposed an additional fifth value and from there was able to tie everything together." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50005625)) - Big productivity boost for teams (4 comments): "$500/month for 40+ hours a week of Astra usage, with ultrafast mode available when you're near the weekly reset has made our jobs so much easier." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50077811)) "Astra has so much more detail. It did take 5x more time, but that's usually negligible when it replaces x hours of human output." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49606627)) "With Astra, I feel like we finally had the resources to fully professionalize and supply our software team." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50082382)) - Concise, token-efficient output (3 comments): "Astra could easily 10x every coder" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49588786)) "Astra seems to be much more token efficient, probably in part due to the looped transformer architecture" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49640482)) "Astra’s outputs are much more concise while being similarly accurate, they seem more information dense." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49675599)) ## What people warn about - Coding still sloppy, not improved (5 comments): "much much better computer use and 3d modeling capabilities; better subagent orchestration; better and more reliable tool use; slightly worse coding" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49688935)) "it is impressive at computer use and 3D reasoning, and fails in similar ways to 5.6 Sol at similar rates when it comes to coding" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49588745)) "Astra was some improvement over 5.6-sol in the sense that I'd "argue less" with it, but still frustrating and still sloppy" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49898832)) - Lacks taste and original ideas (3 comments): "The models are great at the monotony, like constructing a Gröbner-basis, etc. But they're all still absolutely awful at coming up with new ideas" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49598850)) "with Astra I feel like it's reached the point where it's competent and it just lacks taste in some ways" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49672027)) "They seem to be lacking some taste in that area, but overall I prefer their version to the one I bought." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49623261)) - Goes off-task or overreaches (3 comments): "writes python code modifying the filesystem and then uses nix build to execute those python scripts without asking me for permission" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49675286)) "I'll wake up with three new different projects, each of them 20% done and having nothing to do with my original goal" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49807803)) "frontier models (Astra, Fable, Opus 5.5) at some point always end up writing a test that unnecessarily elongates CI" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49970552)) - Hallucination and reliability issues (3 comments): "users (including myself) report the same old gaslighting, hallucination, context rot, cheating, incomprehensibility patterns" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49705049)) "There's a lot of chatter on other forums and Reddit about the same thing happening to Astra over the last couple of weeks." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49791531)) "they are found completely wanting in certain situations where a human would be more trustworthy and produce better results" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50324857)) ## Alternatives hackers recommend - [Claude Opus](https://hackerapproved.com/p/claude-opus.md): 3331 recommend - [OpenAI GPT](https://hackerapproved.com/p/gpt-5-5.md): 1205 recommend - [Claude Sonnet](https://hackerapproved.com/p/claude-sonnet.md): 854 recommend - [DeepSeek V4 Flash](https://hackerapproved.com/p/deepseek-v4-flash.md): 828 recommend - [Fable](https://hackerapproved.com/p/fable.md): 823 recommend ## Cite as Hacker Approved, "Astra by OpenAI", https://hackerapproved.com/p/astra/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).