OpenAI describes how its own researchers now work with coding agents

OpenAI published two texts on 6 September, one of them an essay by chief scientist Jakub Pachocki. Both use the abbreviation RSI, recursive self-improvement, for models that help improve the next model. One of the pieces describes how the company's research staff use coding agents. Simon Willison, who summarised the texts on his blog, writes that 2026 is the year agentic engineering took off at OpenAI, as at most other companies.

A chart in the piece shows AI spending per researcher rising sharply in late July. Willison's guess is that this is when employees got access to the model later released as GPT-6 Astra; he presents it as a guess, not a confirmed cause.