GPT-6.1 Terra turns up again, as a cheaper reviewer in a GitHub engineer's Copilot workflow

A second public repo now calls GPT-6.1 Terra, a model OpenAI has not announced. On October 24 at 03:48 UTC, Nate Finch, whose GitHub profile lists his company as GitHub, merged a pull request in his own public repo, natefinch/council4, that moves every review step from gpt-6.1-sol to gpt-6.1-terra at high effort. The pull request's own description: "Trial a cheaper reviewer." @Mr_Salio spotted it on X on October 25; we read the pull request (#3327) and its policy file directly.

WHAT THE COMMIT SAYS

The repo's workflow config now names gpt-6.1-terra for the initial review, re-review, integration review and CI review, and keeps gpt-6.1-sol for selection. The commits carry Copilot session ids, and the pull request says the run report will show the review cost so it can be compared with the earlier Sol reviews, about 74 to 88 AIC each (AIC is the unit the workflow's cost rows use). So the id worked for him, through Copilot, before any announcement.

WHAT IT DOES NOT SHOW

council4 is a personal project, described on GitHub as a Magic: The Gathering playing bot. The word "production" in the commit refers to that repo's card-production workflow, not to GitHub's own code review. Nothing here says GitHub Copilot is switching its product to Terra, and nothing gives a price.

WHERE ELSE IT HAS SHOWN UP

On October 16, Microsoft's dotnet/efcore repo set gpt-6.1-terra as the judge model in 18 eval configs, also run through GitHub's Copilot SDK. A Microsoft codebase and a GitHub engineer's own repo now call the same unreleased id, both through Copilot, which fits early access for Microsoft and GitHub before any public release.

WHAT WE DO NOT KNOW

When it ships and what it costs. @Mr_Salio and @kimmonismus expect a release next week, at the end of OpenAI's 28-day Codex push; that is their reading, and OpenAI has said nothing. Our Next GPT Terra hunt is armed and will alert the moment the id lists in a public catalog.