OpenAI's model documentation spells out where GPT-6 Astra tends toward unwanted behavior and how developers can work around it.
GPT-6 Astra asks clarifying questions more often than GPT-5.6 Sol instead of making assumptions on its own, according to OpenAI, making it a "more effective collaborator." The trade-off is that the model sometimes stops where users expect it to keep going.
To push it toward more initiative, OpenAI recommends a prompt telling the model to infer the user's "intent" from context and show a "bias towards action." Phrases like "can you...," "I want to...," or "help me..." should be treated as calls to act, not invitations for follow-up questions.
You should infer the user’s intent and the scope of the task from the instructions and the conversation context so far. Your task is to demonstrate a tendency to act and to follow through on the user’s intended task until completion. If the user expresses the intention to complete new work or resolve an existing problem, continue working persistently until the user’s intended goal is achieved. Work independently toward the user’s goal (e.g., create isolated work trees/checkouts, resolve merge conflicts, perform read-only actions, create draft PRs, etc.), unless the actions are clearly destructive or irreversible.
