Sourcegraph

Key Terms

• The Dial - Amp's new agent mode system (July 9), replacing smart, deep, rush, and large. Four levels: low, medium (default), high, ultra. Each maps to a specific model and reasoning effort, but the mapping is not guaranteed to persist. Turn with Ctrl+S in the CLI or the web mode picker. Source: Ampcode – The Dial
• Mode (deprecated) - The former named modes (smart, deep, rush, large) are deprecated but available as installable plugins: amp plugins add --auto-update @amp/smart-classic, @amp/deep-classic, @amp/rush-classic, @amp/large-classic. Smart (classic) runs Claude Opus 4.8 with high reasoning. Source: Ampcode – The Dial , Ampcode – Modes
• Oracle - A second-opinion tool available to every Dial mode. On high, GPT-5.6 Sol writes and Claude Fable 5 reviews. On ultra, Fable 5 writes and GPT-5.6 Sol reviews. On low and medium, GPT-5.6 Sol serves as oracle. Source: Ampcode – The Dial , Ampcode – Modes
• Subagents - Independent agents spawned by the main agent. As of July: Librarian (GPT-5.6 Sol), Search (GPT-5.6 Terra), Review (GPT-5.5), Read Thread (GLM-5.2). Source: Ampcode – Modes
• Orbs - Remote machines where Amp agents run unsupervised. Four sizes as of July 3: a0.tiny (1 CPU, 2GB, $0.08/hour), a0.small (2 CPU, 4GB, $0.17/hour), a0.medium (8 CPU, 16GB, $0.66/hour), a0.large (16 CPU, 32GB, $1.32/hour, default). 40GB disk (doubled from 20GB). Billed by the minute, sleep when idle. Source: Ampcode – More Orb Sizes
• Puck - Amp's meta-agent (July 20), accessible from anywhere on ampcode.com. Can spawn agents in orbs, investigate issues, find threads, archive work, and coordinate other agents. Runs on GPT-5.6 Terra. Source: Ampcode – Meet Puck
• Event-Driven Orbs - Orbs can now receive webhook requests from external services (GitHub, Linear, Discord, Slack) and wake up to handle them. Implemented via amp.createWebhook in the Plugin API. Source: Ampcode – Event Driven Orbs
• Multiplayer - Any orb can be turned into a shared environment where workspace members join, send messages to the agent, and access the orb's portal, file changes, and shared terminal. Source: Ampcode – Multiplayer
• Schedule - Agents can set their own schedules, wake themselves up, and continue with full context. Works with Slack, Puck, and agent-to-agent spawning. Source: Ampcode – Schedule
• Runner mode - A headless Amp mode (amp --no-tui) that only waits to start and run new threads on a machine. Enables running agents on any machine with a shell. Source: Ampcode – Agents Anywhere
• OIDC for Orbs - Orbs can prove their identity via OpenID Connect tokens (amp orb id-token), enabling passwordless access to GCP, Tailscale, AWS KMS, and other providers without injecting secrets. Source: Ampcode – Secrets Of The Orb
• Linked subscription - Megawatt and Gigawatt subscribers can link a ChatGPT subscription (for GPT-5.6) or X Premium+/SuperGrok subscription for unlimited token usage with no per-token fees from Amp. Source: Ampcode – Pricing
• Pass-through pricing - Pay-as-you-go users are charged at model provider API rates with zero markup. Still available alongside subscriptions. Source: Ampcode – Pricing
• Auto-compaction - When the context window reaches 90% capacity, Amp summarizes context and continues. Amp's longest thread has been compacted 68 times (would be 21M+ tokens uncompressed). Source: Ampcode – Read Bigger Threads
• AGENTS.md - Configuration files that guide Amp on codebase structure, build/test commands, and conventions. Source: Ampcode – Manual
• Proof of Human - Passkey-authenticated "sudo" sessions required for sensitive operations. Workspace admins can enforce this for members. Source: Ampcode – Proof Of Human

Latest Changes

Changes since the 2026-06 report.

June watch-item verification

• Free tier reopening to new signups: Still closed. The Amp Free tier is no longer listed on the pricing page at all (the page now shows only Megawatt, Gigawatt, Pay-as-you-go, and Enterprise). No July post announced a reopening. Classification: still-pending. Source: Ampcode – Pricing , Ampcode – Amp Free Is Full For Now
• Per-token rate publication: Not published. Amp still does not disclose per-token dollar rates. Subscriptions now provide included usage allowances ($20 and $200/month in agent usage), but the per-token breakdown behind those allowances is not documented. Classification: failed. Source: Ampcode – Pricing
• Opus 5 / GPT-5.6 model additions: GPT-5.6 Sol confirmed (now the default in medium and high). Claude Opus 5 was not added; instead, Anthropic's Claude Fable 5 (described as "Mythos class") powers ultra. GLM-5.2 (Z.ai open-weight) powers low. Classification: confirmed (GPT-5.6), partial (no Opus 5; Fable 5 instead). Source: Ampcode – The Dial , Ampcode – Modes
• Orbs adoption/pricing changes: Confirmed. Orbs gained four sizes with granular pricing ($0.08 to $1.32/hour), and subscriptions include large orb-hour allowances (750 small-orb hours on Megawatt, 1,000 large-orb hours on Gigawatt). Classification: confirmed. Source: Ampcode – More Orb Sizes , Ampcode – Subscriptions

July changes

• New pricing model: Amp Subscriptions launched in Beta (July 18). Megawatt ($20/month: 750 hours of small orbs, $20 included agent usage, low and medium modes only, linked ChatGPT/X subs). Gigawatt ($200/month: 1,000 hours of large orbs, $200 included agent usage, all modes including high and ultra). Pay-as-you-go remains available. Source: Ampcode – Subscriptions
• New mode system: The Dial (July 9) replaced smart, deep, rush, and large with low, medium (default), high, and ultra. Each mode maps to a model and reasoning effort. Old modes are available as installable plugins. Source: Ampcode – The Dial
• New models: GPT-5.6 Sol now powers medium (medium reasoning) and high (xhigh reasoning). Claude Fable 5 powers ultra. GLM-5.2 (Z.ai open-weight) powers low. Puck runs on GPT-5.6 Terra. Librarian upgraded to GPT-5.6 Sol (from GPT-5.5). Search upgraded to GPT-5.6 Terra (from Gemini 3 Flash). Titling moved to GPT-5.6 Luna. Compaction moved to GPT-5.6 Sol. Read Thread subagent moved to GLM-5.2. Source: Ampcode – The Dial , Ampcode – Modes
• Default model swap: Amp changed the default mode from smart (Claude Opus 4.8) to medium (GPT-5.6 Sol) on July 9. Per Amp's July 29 post, not a single user complained. smart's share of new threads went from 55% to ~0% within a week. Of Dial users, 69% never set it to anything but medium. Almost nobody installed the classic-mode plugins to get Opus 4.8 back. Source: Ampcode – Who Cares About The Model
• New orb sizes: Four orb sizes shipped (July 3): a0.tiny ($0.08/hour, 1 CPU/2GB), a0.small ($0.17/hour, 2 CPU/4GB), a0.medium ($0.66/hour, 8 CPU/16GB), a0.large ($1.32/hour, 16 CPU/32GB). The large size dropped from $1.66/hour (June) to $1.32/hour. Storage doubled from 20GB to 40GB at no extra cost. Source: Ampcode – More Orb Sizes
• New capability: Event-Driven Orbs (July 23) let orbs receive webhook requests from GitHub, Linear, Discord, Slack, or any HTTP source, wake up, and handle the event. Implemented via amp.createWebhook in the Plugin API. Source: Ampcode – Event Driven Orbs
• New capability: Multiplayer (July 22) lets workspace members join an orb thread, send messages to the agent, and access the orb's portal, file changes, and shared terminal. Source: Ampcode – Multiplayer
• New capability: Right on Schedule (July 21) lets agents set their own schedules, wake themselves up, and continue with full context and history. Source: Ampcode – Schedule
• New capability: Meet Puck (July 20) is a meta-agent accessible from ampcode.com that can spawn agents in orbs, investigate issues, find threads, and coordinate work. Runs on GPT-5.6 Terra. Source: Ampcode – Meet Puck
• New integration: Amp in Slack (July 20) lets users mention @Amp in any Slack channel or thread to summon Puck for bug fixes, incident response, codebase questions, and thread management. Requires a workspace admin to connect the Slack workspace. Source: Ampcode – Slack Integration
• New capability: From Agent to Agent (July 17) lets agents spawn other agents, send messages, and exchange files across Amp threads. Agents can fan out work in parallel across orbs, local machines, or remote machines. Source: Ampcode – From Agent To Agent
• New capability: Secrets of the Orb (July 14) adds OIDC token support so orbs can prove identity to GCP, Tailscale, AWS KMS, and other providers without injected secrets. Tokens include custom claims: workspace_id, project_id, user_id, thread_id. Source: Ampcode – Secrets Of The Orb
• New capability: Agents, Anywhere (July 8) lets users start new agents remotely on any machine running amp, including laptops, servers, cloud dev boxes, and Raspberry Pis. Includes a headless runner mode (amp --no-tui). Source: Ampcode – Agents Anywhere
• Rewrite: Read Bigger Threads (July 2) rewrote the read_thread tool as a subagent tuned for long threads. The prior version fetched the whole thread in one LLM call, which broke on Amp's longest thread (21M+ tokens, 68 compactions). The new subagent uses GLM-5.2, searches the thread, and checks for revisions or reverts. Source: Ampcode – Read Bigger Threads
• Enterprise: Amp Labs partnered with Westpac (July 29), one of Australia's largest banks, to embed Amp engineers on-site in Sydney for data system modernization. The founding team includes hires from Block, Ethereum Foundation, Google, and Canva. Source: Ampcode – Amp Labs Westpac
• Enterprise pricing: The Enterprise tier is now described as "usage-based pricing" with "bring your own keys for inference" on the pricing page. The June description of "50% markup over pass-through + $1,000 onboarding" is no longer present. Source: Ampcode – Pricing
• Experimental model plugins: The modes page now lists installable plugin modes for third-party models: Inkling (Thinking Machines' open-weight multimodal model), Kimi K3 (Moonshot AI), Grok 4.5 (xAI), Claude Fable 5, and GLM 5.2. Source: Ampcode – Modes

Plans

Amp now offers monthly subscriptions (Beta, launched July 18) alongside pay-as-you-go and Enterprise. Subscribers can link external AI subscriptions (ChatGPT, X Premium+/SuperGrok) for unlimited token usage with no per-token fees from Amp. Source: Ampcode – Subscriptions , Ampcode – Pricing

Terms explained:

• Linked subscription - Subscribers connect a ChatGPT or X Premium+/SuperGrok account. Amp routes GPT-5.6 usage through the linked ChatGPT sub, so the subscriber pays no per-token fees to Amp for that usage. Token limits are governed by the third-party provider, not Amp. Ampcode – Pricing
• Included agent usage - Each subscription includes a dollar amount of agent usage ($20 on Megawatt, $200 on Gigawatt) at pass-through rates. Amp states it gives "at least the subscription cost per month in agent usage" and that depending on usage patterns, users "may get extra usage." Ampcode – Pricing
• Bring your own keys (BYOK) - Enterprise customers provide their own model-provider API keys for inference. This replaces the previous 50% markup model. Ampcode – Pricing
• SSO (SAML) - Employees authenticate through their corporate identity provider instead of separate Amp passwords. Ampcode – Pricing
• SCIM (directory sync) - Automatically provisions and deprovisions Amp accounts when employees join or leave the company. Ampcode – Pricing
• Zero data retention - The model provider does not store or train on text inputs sent through Amp Enterprise. Ampcode – Pricing
• OIDC for orbs - Orbs mint short-lived identity tokens that cloud providers (GCP, AWS, Tailscale) trust for passwordless access. Ampcode – Secrets Of The Orb
• Proof of Human - Passkey-authenticated sessions required for sensitive operations. Workspace admins can enforce this for all members. Ampcode – Proof Of Human

Notes:

• Each human can have at most two subscriptions. Subscription resource quotas cannot be directly resold. Source: Ampcode – Pricing
• To use Amp beyond subscription included limits, users must link a ChatGPT subscription or add paid credits. Source: Ampcode – Pricing
• Subscriptions can be cancelled at any time. Refunds are available for the current month minus actual usage costs. Source: Ampcode – Pricing
• High and ultra modes are available on Megawatt only if the user adds paid credits, or on Gigawatt, or with an active Anthropic API key. Source: Ampcode – Pricing
• Workspace members can use personal subscriptions within workspace billing if the workspace allows it or a Billing Manager approves. Source: Ampcode – Pricing
• Per-thread cost is visible by clicking the price on the right sidebar of any thread page, or by running amp usage. Source: Ampcode – Pricing

API Pricing

Amp does not expose a standalone API. All usage goes through the Amp CLI or IDE integrations. Billing is based on pass-through costs from underlying model providers for pay-as-you-go users, included usage allowances for subscribers, or bring-your-own-keys for Enterprise. Amp does not publish per-token rates. Source: Ampcode – Pricing

Model roles and wiring (July 2026, per The Dial):

The OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google reference rates are tracked in cross-supplier reports at OpenAI (GPT-5.6), Anthropic (Fable 5), and Google (Gemini 3 Flash). Sources: Anthropic – Pricing , OpenAI – Pricing

Orb pricing (remote machine cost surface):

Source: Ampcode – More Orb Sizes

Subscription value comparison:

Source: Ampcode – Pricing

Important: Amp still does not publish the base per-token dollar rate it charges for any model under pay-as-you-go. The only published dollar figures are orb hourly rates and subscription included-usage amounts. Subscribers who link a ChatGPT or X subscription pay no per-token fees to Amp for usage routed through those subscriptions, but the token allowances are governed by the third-party provider. Source: Ampcode – Pricing

Model Performance / Benchmarks

Amp does not publish public benchmark scores (SWE-Bench Verified, TerminalBench, etc.) for its current Dial modes. The company reports internal eval scores in model cards and blog posts, but the eval suite, prompts, and scoring criteria are not published. The most detailed public eval data is for GPT-5.5 (the predecessor now replaced by GPT-5.6), published on the GPT-5.5 model card. Source: Ampcode – Gpt 5.5

GPT-5.5 internal eval detail (predecessor to GPT-5.6, from the model card):

Source: Ampcode – Gpt 5.5

The eval methodology (task set, prompts, pass criteria) is not published, so Amp's internal scores are not directly comparable to vendor SWE-Bench submissions. GPT-5.6-specific eval numbers have not yet been published as of the report date.

Latest News

Subscriptions, At Last (July 18, 2026)

Amp launched monthly subscriptions in Beta. Megawatt ($20/month) includes 750 small-orb hours, $20 of agent usage, and low/medium modes. Gigawatt ($200/month) includes 1,000 large-orb hours, $200 of agent usage, and all modes. Both plans support linking a ChatGPT subscription for GPT-5.6 and an X Premium+/SuperGrok subscription for unlimited token usage with no per-token fees. Amp explicitly framed this as answering the "Amp is too expensive" critique, citing Armin Ronacher's December 2025 description of Amp as "the Apple or Porsche of agentic coding tools." Pay-as-you-go remains available. Subscribers who joined on or before July 19 got bonus 2x usage for the first month. Source: Ampcode – Subscriptions

The Dial (July 9, 2026)

Amp replaced its named agent modes (smart, deep, rush, large) with a four-level Dial: low, medium (default), high, ultra. The rationale is that frontier models have converged enough that the user's question should be "how hard is this task?" not "which model do I want?" Each mode maps to a specific model and reasoning effort: low uses GLM-5.2, medium uses GPT-5.6 Sol at medium reasoning, high uses GPT-5.6 Sol at xhigh reasoning, ultra uses Claude Fable 5. Every mode has a different model serving as oracle for second opinions. The old modes are available as installable plugins. Reasoning effort is now part of the tier, eliminating the separate Opt+D reasoning-level cycle. Source: Ampcode – The Dial

Who Cares About the Model? (July 29, 2026)

Amp reported that its July 9 default-model swap from Claude Opus 4.8 (smart) to GPT-5.6 Sol (medium) produced zero user complaints. Before the Dial, smart carried 55% of new threads. A week after the Dial shipped, it was near zero. The four Dial modes carried 93% of all new threads by late July, with medium alone at two-thirds. Of Dial users, 69% never changed the dial from medium. The classic-mode plugins that restore Opus 4.8 were installed by almost nobody. Amp's takeaway: the differences between frontier models are now small enough that task difficulty, context quality, and review discipline matter more than which model is behind the agent. Source: Ampcode – Who Cares About The Model

More Orb Sizes (July 3, 2026)

Orbs expanded from a single size ($1.66/hour, 32GB/16 cores in June) to four tiers: a0.tiny ($0.08/hour, 1 CPU/2GB), a0.small ($0.17/hour, 2 CPU/4GB), a0.medium ($0.66/hour, 8 CPU/16GB), and a0.large ($1.32/hour, 16 CPU/32GB). The large default dropped 20% in price from $1.66 to $1.32. Disk storage doubled from 20GB to 40GB across all sizes at no extra cost. Source: Ampcode – More Orb Sizes

Event Driven Orbs (July 23, 2026)

Orbs can now receive HTTP webhook requests from external services and wake up to handle them. GitHub issues, Linear tickets, Discord messages, CI failures, and monitoring alerts can all trigger an orb. Amp generates a project-specific plugin that validates signatures, deduplicates deliveries, and spawns a fresh orb thread with trusted event metadata. The webhook URL persists across orb restarts. Source: Ampcode – Event Driven Orbs

Multiplayer (July 22, 2026)

Any orb can be turned into a shared multiplayer environment from the thread's Share menu. Workspace members can join, send messages to the agent, and access the orb's portal, file changes, and shared terminal until multiplayer mode expires. Amp frames orbs as becoming the "de facto unit of work," blurring the lines between problem description, solution code, and running computation. Source: Ampcode – Multiplayer

Right on Schedule (July 21, 2026)

Agents can now set their own schedules, wake themselves up, and continue with full context and history. Example use cases: a daily morning report on the five slowest database queries, a reminder in two days to clean up a feature flag, monitoring a backfill job every ten minutes, or hourly error triage that spawns fix threads. Works with Slack, Puck, and agent-to-agent spawning. Source: Ampcode – Schedule

Meet Puck (July 20, 2026)

Puck is Amp's new meta-agent, accessible from anywhere on ampcode.com. It can spawn agents in orbs, investigate CI failures, find old threads, archive work, create projects, and fan out tasks. Puck runs on GPT-5.6 Terra and serves as the coordination layer for the Slack integration and scheduled tasks. Source: Ampcode – Meet Puck

Amp Is Now In Slack (July 20, 2026)

Users can mention @Amp in any Slack channel or thread to summon Puck. Amp can read screenshots, reproduce bugs, root-cause production incidents, push fixes, notify teammates, and search Slack history for context. Requires a workspace admin to connect the Slack workspace, and individual users to link their Amp and Slack accounts. Source: Ampcode – Slack Integration

From Agent to Agent (July 17, 2026)

Agents can now spawn other agents and exchange messages and files across threads. Agents can run side quests in orbs while the main thread continues, fan out parallel work (e.g., "run four low-mode threads to test at four screen sizes"), pull files from abandoned prototype threads, offload work to remote machines, and coordinate cross-project documentation. Source: Ampcode – From Agent To Agent

Secrets of the Orb (July 14, 2026)

Orbs now support OIDC (OpenID Connect) for workload identity. An orb can mint a short-lived token via amp orb id-token --audience that includes custom claims (workspace_id, project_id, user_id, thread_id). This enables passwordless access to GCP (workload identity federation), Tailscale (trust credentials), AWS KMS (SOPS decryption), and PAM entitlements without injecting secrets into orbs. Source: Ampcode – Secrets Of The Orb

Agents, Anywhere (July 8, 2026)

Users can now start new agents remotely on any machine running amp, not just in Amp-hosted orbs. A runner mode (amp --no-tui) starts Amp headless, waiting only to accept and run new threads. Multiple runners can run on the same machine in different directories. Amp's pitch: agents can run on your laptop, server, cloud dev box, or Raspberry Pi. Source: Ampcode – Agents Anywhere

Read Bigger Threads (July 2, 2026)

The read_thread tool was rewritten as a subagent tuned for long threads. The prior version fetched the entire thread in a single LLM call, which broke on Amp's longest thread (compacted 68 times, 21M+ tokens uncompressed). The new subagent runs on GLM-5.2, searches the thread, reads messages, and checks whether later work revised or reverted earlier findings. It also works within the current thread, so the agent can go back and look at decisions from weeks ago instead of trusting the compaction summary. Source: Ampcode – Read Bigger Threads

Banking on the Frontier (July 29, 2026)

Amp Labs partnered with Westpac, one of Australia's oldest and largest banks, to transform how the bank builds and delivers technology. Amp Labs is building a team to work on-site in Sydney alongside Westpac engineers. The founding team includes hires from Block (Gareth Townsend), Ethereum Foundation (Matty Evans), Google (Andrew Gerrand), and Canva (Chris Nicol, Ryan Christensen). Source: Ampcode – Amp Labs Westpac

Community Signals

July HN engagement remained low despite the biggest product month in Amp's history

Despite launching subscriptions, a new mode system, a silent default-model swap, and roughly a dozen major features, Amp's HackerNews footprint in July 2026 stayed minimal. A date-filtered HN search for ampcode stories created in July returned six Amp-related submissions, none exceeding 3 points or generating substantive comment threads.

Source: Hn – Search By Date

The one comment on the subscriptions thread was about the website's font legibility, not the product. gigatexal: "Barely legible website at least on mobile. Who chose that font?" News – Item

The subscription launch HN posts: News – Item (2 points) and News – Item (1 point). The "Who Cares About the Model?" post: News – Item (2 points). The Puck "Meta-Agent" post: News – Item (2 points).

This continues the pattern noted in prior reports: Amp's biggest HN moment is still the December 2025 spinout announcement (90 points, 37 comments), and even category-defining releases generate little independent discussion on HN.

The cost critique may be answered by subscriptions, but no fresh HN discussion confirmed it

The dominant community theme from prior months, that Amp is too expensive, was directly addressed by the July 18 subscription launch. Amp itself cited this in the launch post, linking to Armin Ronacher's December 2025 essay where he wrote: "Amp feels like the Apple or Porsche of agentic coding tools." Lucumr – A Year Of Vibes

However, because the subscription launch drew only 2 points and 1 non-substantive comment on HN, there is no fresh community validation or critique of the new pricing on HN. The most substantive buyer-facing community quotes about Amp's cost remain from the December 2025 spinout thread:

• ramraj07: "As someone who switches between most CLIs to compare, Amp is still on top, costs more, but has the best results. The librarian and oracle make it leagues ahead of the competition." News – Item
• embedding-shape: "I've gave it a try a couple of times, but it's so expensive I'm having a hard time even being able to judge it fairly. The first time I spent just $5, second $10 and the third time $20, but they all went by so fast I'm worried even if I find it great, it's way too expensive, and having a number tick up/down makes me nervous." News – Item
• sergiotapia: "Amp blew me away and was my primary workhorse. Much better than anything out there for a time. But then I switched to GLM 4.6 using Claude CLI tool and that was good enough and significantly cheaper/faster... With Amp I was spending $5 here and there every day. Great, but pricey." News – Item
• incoming1211: "I don't understand how people use these tools without a subscription. Unless you are using it very infrequently paying per token gets costly very fast." and "Work pays for it... our team spends > $1000/m EACH on Amp alone." News – Item

General observations

• The $20/month Megawatt plan with a linked ChatGPT subscription directly addresses the per-token cost anxiety expressed by embedding-shape and sergiotapia. The $1,000+/month/team spending reported by incoming1211 would now be partly absorbed by Gigawatt's $200/month included usage plus BYOK on Enterprise. However, no fresh HN or public forum data confirms whether the community has registered this shift. Source: Ampcode – Subscriptions
• Reddit's r/AmpCode community and X/Twitter were not fetched for this report. No fresh community data from those platforms was collected.
• The "Who Cares About the Model?" post is notable for what it claims (zero complaints after a silent default-model swap) but had no HN discussion to independently verify or challenge that claim. Source: Ampcode – Who Cares About The Model

Enterprise Readiness

Transparency Gaps