Answering you right nowSonnetFour models and a dial. One click, before you type.
The picker you never touch
The default winsWhatever was selected the last time is what answers you today. Nobody chose it. It stayed.
Both mistakes costThe heavy one on a routine job burns your afternoon. The light one on a hard job comes back wrong, three times.
It is one clickBefore you type. Not after the answer disappoints you.
Same box. Same conversation. Four very different afternoons.
Three things
What you leave with
Four names, and what each one is actually for. In your words, not in a benchmark.
The second dial. The one almost nobody knows exists, and where most of the spending happens.
What each combination costs you, relative to the others. So you can decide in one second.
No benchmarks, no prices in euros. Ratios, and the habits that follow from them.
01
Four names, one family
What changes from one model to the next, and what never changes.
Before the differences
Same family, same manners
Identical, all four
The way you write to it. A good instruction is a good instruction everywhere.
What it knows, and what it invents. Same family, same training, same blind spots.
Where your words go. The confidentiality rules do not change with the picker.
Projects, files, skills. All four read the same things you set up.
Different
How far it carries a problem before it loses the thread.
How long you wait for the answer.
How much of your plan one answer takes.
How much it can hold at once — the lightest one has a smaller window.
The four names
HaikuThe sprinterSort, extract, classify, reformulate, translate. Volume work with a clear rule.Answers before you look up. Smaller window.
SonnetThe workhorseDrafting, summarising, reading a document, answering a client. Most of your day.The sensible default for almost everything.
OpusThe specialistReal reasoning. Compare, arbitrate, build an argument, find what is missing.For work you will put your name on.
FableThe marathon runnerThe hardest problems, and the long jobs that run for an hour without you.The most capable. Rarely what a morning needs.
The misunderstanding
Not a knowledge ladder
The big one does not know moreThey come from the same family. On a question of fact, the light one and the big one say the same thing — and are wrong about the same things.
The light one is not the wrong answerOn routine work, the two land in the same place. You paid five times more for the same paragraph.
What changes is how far it carriesTen steps, four documents, a contradiction buried on page sixty. That is where the light one drops the thread and the big one does not.
And none of them knows your companyThat never changes. Instructions, files, skills — the same work, whichever one is selected.
02
The second dial
Not which model answers. How long it thinks before it does.
Effort
The draft before the answer
Before it writes to you, it can write to itself. A private draft: try, check, start again. Then it answers. The dial says how long that draft runs.
low
Straight to the answer.
medium
A quick look before writing.
high
The usual setting. Enough for most hard things.
xhigh
Long tasks that run on their own.
max
When being right matters more than anything.
the private draft — you pay for it the answer you read
Where the dial is
In the app a switchExtended thinking, on or off. Two positions, and that covers most of what you need.
In the developer tools five settingslow, medium, high, xhigh, max. The usual setting is high. You move it per task.
On the sprinter no dialThe lightest model has no draft to run. It just answers. That is the point of it.
Same dial. Different name, depending on which door you came in through.
Put them together
Two dials, not one
Dial one — the model
Who does the work. The sprinter, the workhorse, the specialist, the marathon runner.
Sets what one word costs you.
Dial two — the effort
How long they take. Straight to the answer, or a long private draft first.
Sets how many words there are.
Everyone argues about the first one. The second one is where the afternoon goes.
03
Which one for what
Your week, sorted into two piles. And the rule that sorts it.
The light pile
Monday morning
Clean up this list of two hundred leads, one company per line.Sprinter
Say this email again, warmer, four lines.Sprinter
Pull the three dates and the notice period out of this contract.Sprinter
Which of these forty tickets are about billing?Sprinter
Turn these notes into a clean one-page summary for the team.Workhorse · low
Volume, a clear rule, and you would not have thought twice about it yourself.
The heavy pile
Thursday afternoon
Read these four proposals and tell me where we lose, and why.Specialist · high
Build the answer to a client who says we are twenty percent too expensive.Specialist · high
Go through this eighty-page contract and find what commits us.Specialist · high
Rewrite the whole deck from these notes, and check every figure against the file.Marathon · xhigh
Several steps, several documents, and a judgement at the end that you will sign.
Three questions, in this order
How to decide
1Judgement, or work?If the rule is clear and there is just a lot of it, that is work. The sprinter does work.
2Will I check it, or send it?Anything that leaves your hands with your name on it goes up one notch.
3One step, or twenty?Several documents, several steps, an hour on its own: the heavy end, and the dial up.
In doubt, start one notch below your instinct. If the first answer is right, your instinct was expensive.
What it costs to get it wrong
Three traps
The big one, alwaysSelected once, never touched again. You spend a whole day's allowance before lunch, on emails a sprinter would have written.
The small one on a hard jobThree tries at one fifth of the price is not a saving. Count the finished job, never the answer.
Maximum effort on an emailYou pay for a long private draft, to get four lines you already had in your head.
Both ends of the picker are expensive. Only the middle is free.
04
What it costs you
A rate, a volume, and the two of them multiplied.
Dial one — the rate
The rate card
Haikuthe sprinter
×1
Sonnetthe workhorse
×2
Opusthe specialist
×5
Fablethe marathon runner
×10
And on all four, writing costs about five times reading. Same as always: ask for five lines, pay for five lines.
Per word, relative to the lightest. Ratios, not prices — the prices move, the shape holds.
Dial two — the volume
Effort is volume, not rate
Change the model
The price of one word changes. The answer stays the same length.
Change the effort
The price of one word does not move at all. The number of words does — mostly words you never read.
Which is why the second dial surprises people. The bill goes up and nothing on screen got longer.
The two dials together
They multiply
low
medium
high
xhigh
max
Haiku
1
no dial — it just answers
Sonnet
2
4
8
12
20
Opus
5
10
20
30
50
Fable
10
20
40
60
100
What one answer weighs, against the sprinter answering straight away. Orders of magnitude, not measurements.
Eight jobs, one afternoon
One afternoon, three ways
Everything on the big one maxEight beautiful answers. Six of them nobody needed beautiful. You stop at three o'clock and wait for the reset.
Everything on the light oneFast all afternoon. Two of the eight came back thin, you did them again, then again. Finished at seven.
Sorted six light, two heavySame eight jobs, done once each. Finished at five. The plan still has room for tomorrow morning.
Same work. Same day. The difference is one click, eight times.
One sentence ties it all together
The model sets the rate. The effort sets how long the meter runs.
You choose both, before you type.
Before next time
One task, three models
Take
One task you did three times this week. A real one, the boring kind.
Bring
The lightest setting that still did the job — and how long the good answer took to arrive.
Do it once. Then that task has a default, and you never think about it again.