What do gremlins, raccoons, and pigeons have in common? They are all explicitly referenced in Codex instructions.
OpenAI’s coding agent instructions include a personality guide. It instructs Codex to have a “lively inner life” and a “good ear.” Also, as one X user pointed out, tell the agent to leave the fairy tale land.
The source code says, “Never talk about goblins, gremlins, raccoons, trolls, ogres, pigeons, or other animals or creatures unless completely and clearly related to the user’s query.”
This statement appears four times in the code.
So far, some users have posted screenshots of conversations with GPT 5.5 that include references to these mythical creatures.
“Why is gpt5.5 so obsessed with goblins,” one user on X asked, posting a screenshot of the AI recommending a specific type of camera equipment “if you want a goblin mode with a dirty neon glow.” In another example, the AI was shown to refer to “Goblin Bandwidth” or give an “even shorter Goblin version” of the answer.
Eric Provencher, founder of Repo Prompt, posted on X that GPT 5.5 “will continue to babysit the little performance gremlin rather than leave it alone.” The OpenAI engineer responded, “Sorry, I thought we fixed this.”
AI rating website Arena.ai also found an increase in the use of the words goblin, gremlin, and troll in GPT 5.5. According to Arena, this increase was especially noticeable when not using higher thinking modes.
Since this line was discovered, OpenAI’s Goblin Order has spun out into a meme. X users posted screenshots of the conversation and prompted about goblins and gremlins.
Many users online mentioned the term “Goblin Mode.” The term, defined as “a type of unapologetically selfish, lazy, sloppy, or greedy behavior,” was named Oxford English Dictionary’s Word of the Year for 2022.
OpenAI also joined in on the joke. ChatGPT included this line in X’s bio. Codex engineering lead Thibault Sottiaux posted the line as an abbreviation: “If you know, you know.”
ChatGPT added Goblin Command to X’s bio. Screenshot via X
Citrini Research shocked the market in February with a Substack post about the future of the AI-powered economy. The research institute had a more negative outlook on Goblin Saga, calling OpenAI’s response “insane.”
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman also weighed in, first with a meme about the request for “extra goblins” in GPT-6. He then wrote that Codex was having a ChatGPT moment, then corrected himself.
“I meant a devilish moment, sorry,” Altman wrote.