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Public story · 2026-07-10 · high
GitHub restricted each tier to specific subscription SKUs the same day OpenAI shipped them, per OpenAI's announcement.
Why now: OpenAI's three-way split lands as routing decisions move from a one-time setup call to a constant, per-task choice.
OpenAI shipped GPT-5.6 as three separately-named products, not one model with a reasoning-effort dial, per OpenAI's announcement. GitHub gated each tier by subscription SKU the same day, making model tier a billing boundary as well as a capability choice.
Anthropic runs the same structure: Opus, Sonnet, and Haiku, each with its own effort levels instead of a single dial. Copilot puts every one of those options, from both companies, into one model picker. The picker used to be a convenience. Now it's the interface for a decision with real cost and capability consequences per call.
Model choice used to be an infrastructure decision made once, when a team picked what to build on. Now it's made constantly, task by task, and the tools are racing to make that choice visible in the UI.
That makes routing policy, which model tier handles which job, worth treating like a versioned artifact. Check it into the repo next to your CI config, instead of leaving the choice to whatever the picker defaults to.
Each link below shares sources, entities, or timing with this story.
Anthropic partners with OpenAI / Shared entities / Shared topic / Earlier coverage / Tension
Linked by a graph relationship (Anthropic partners with OpenAI); both cover Anthropic, Haiku, Opus, Sonnet; overlapping topics (anthropic, decision, haiku, model).
OpenAI released Codex / Shared entities / Shared topic / Earlier coverage
Linked by a graph relationship (OpenAI released Codex); both cover Anthropic, Haiku, Model, Opus; overlapping topics (haiku, model).
Copilot uses GPT / Shared entities / Shared topic / Earlier coverage / Tension
Linked by a graph relationship (Copilot uses GPT); both cover Copilot, Haiku, OpenAI, Opus; overlapping topics (copilot, haiku, model).