OpenAI Updates Model Spec: Reorganized Around Five Core Values, Style Guidance Retired
OpenAI restructures its Model Spec around five core values, emphasizing intent fidelity and human agency while simplifying specific style instructions.
OpenAI updated its public Model Spec on October 29, 2026, a document describing how it wants its models to behave. The update reorganizes guidance around five core values: faithfulness to human intent, harm minimization, honesty and transparency, human agency, and care. OpenAI states that as models become smarter and take more consequential actions, understanding human values and exercising good judgment in situations not explicitly addressed by instructions becomes increasingly important.
The new spec emphasizes 'faithfulness to human intent' as the foundation, meaning models should go beyond literal instruction following to deeply understand what OpenAI, developers, and users intend and value. When that understanding is incomplete, models should act wisely. For example, when helping someone compare job offers, a model might draw on priorities they have shared before—such as predictable hours—while making those assumptions visible and easy to correct. Additionally, the spec adds guidance on context, oversight, and agency, adjusts some behavioral defaults, and retires much of the detailed style guidance.
OpenAI notes that style should adapt to what people prefer, evidenced by user feedback and context, rather than being hard-coded by the spec. The spec retains stronger defaults, such as 'approaching questions objectively,' but allows users and developers to explicitly ask the model to take a particular perspective. Notably, OpenAI acknowledges that current models do not yet fully reflect this new spec, and the company will continue to improve both the spec and models through research, real-world use, and feedback. The update also reflects the breadth of use cases, referring to the model as 'GPT' rather than 'the assistant' throughout the spec.