OpenAI Reorganizes Model Spec Around Five Core Behavior Values

OpenAI published an updated Model Spec on October 29, 2026, reorganizing its public description of how it wants its models to behave around five values and adding guidance on context, oversight, and agency. The revision, announced on OpenAI’s site, also retires most of the Spec’s detailed style guidance. The five values — faithfulness to human intent, harm minimization, honesty and transparency, human agency, and care — articulate broad commitments that OpenAI said were already reflected across the document. OpenAI described faithfulness to human intent as the foundation of the approach: OpenAI writes the Spec, sets boundaries, and trains models to respect them; developers direct applications within those boundaries; and users direct the model’s work subject to those constraints. The announcement defines the remaining four values.