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Native Bedrock Codex GPT-5.6 Sol lacks explicit cache controls, producing high cache-write spend

▲ 148 points 64 comments by TheP1000 2d ago HN discussion ↗

Pangram verdict · v3.3

We believe that this entire text is AI.

100 %

AI likelihood · overall

AI
0% human-written 100% AI-generated
SEGMENTS · HUMAN 0 of 1
SEGMENTS · AI 1 of 1
WORD COUNT 335
PEAK AI % 100% · §1
Analyzed
Aug 21
backend: pangram/v3.3
Segments scanned
1 windows
avg 335 words each
Distribution
0 / 100%
human / AI fraction
Verdict
AI
Pangram v3.3

Article text · 335 words · 1 segments analyzed

Human AI-generated
§1 AI · 100%

Summary Native Codex CLI requests to Amazon Bedrock Mantle cannot opt into GPT-5.6 Sol explicit prompt caching. On an agentic coding workload, this has produced a large volume of cache-write tokens and materially higher cost. This is related to #35300, but adds independent production usage evidence from the native amazon-bedrock provider. Environment Codex CLI: 0.147.0 Provider: native amazon-bedrock Endpoint: Bedrock Mantle Responses API, us-east-1 Model: openai.gpt-5.6-sol Observed production usage For the completed days 2026-08-05 through 2026-08-08, Cost Explorer usage quantities and the Bedrock rate card produced the following cache-aware estimate for Sol: Requests Cache-write tokens Estimated cache-write cost Estimated total cost 3,656 171.94M $1,182.09 $1,386.46 Cache writes were about 85% of the model's estimated spend. A local Codex session also reported 76 Sol requests with 6.709M cache_write_input_tokens, zero cached_input_tokens, and an average of about 88K cache-write tokens per request. There were no client errors in the corresponding CloudWatch metrics. These are usage-derived estimates, not finalized AWS invoice amounts. Investigation Codex already emits a session-scoped prompt_cache_key, but the request types for both HTTP and WebSocket Responses requests do not include either: prompt_cache_options prompt_cache_breakpoint The built-in Amazon Bedrock provider config exposes transport/auth settings, not structured request-body transformation, so this cannot be configured through config.toml. AWS documents explicit cache mode for GPT-5.6 on Bedrock specifically for agentic workflows with long stable instructions/tool definitions followed by changing tool and user content. That matches the workload above. Requested behavior Add support for serializing prompt_cache_options for GPT-5.6-capable Responses providers. Add a typed prompt_cache_breakpoint field to supported input content blocks. Provide a provider/model capability gate and a safe placement strategy at the end of Codex's measured stable instruction/tool prefix. Surface cache reads and cache writes in per-turn usage telemetry so users can diagnose costly full-prefix rewrites. Scope This report does not claim that every cache write is a defect. Cold starts, genuinely distinct prompts, forks, and compaction can all require writes. The issue is that native Bedrock Codex currently has no way to use the documented explicit-cache mechanism for the stable-prefix case.