GPT-5 shipped in 2025 with ambiguous messaging. After 6 months of daily use, here are my technical takeaways.

Real progress

Multi-step reasoning (71% → 88%), reliable tool use, native 1M context, lower pricing.

Unchanged

URL hallucination under bad RAG, knowledge cutoff late 2025, no major creative gain vs Claude.

Real game changer

The ecosystem: Realtime API, Assistants v3, native strict structured outputs.