A Reddit user reports that GPT-6.1 Terra repeatedly sent progress updates the user had explicitly asked it to avoid while evaluating a novel chapter by chapter in ChatGPT Work; the author says switching to the highest reasoning level did not noticeably help. The post provides no conversation logs or quantitative metrics, so it is not possible to distinguish model behavior from Work orchestration, session-specific factors, or an early-release issue.
Tasks this report can inform: Understanding one user's experience with GPT-6.1 Terra following process constraints in a multi-step writing workflow in ChatGPT Work.
Claims this report cannot support: Generalizing about the model's overall instruction-following rate, literary-analysis quality, or other users' experiences, or determining whether the issue came from the model, client orchestration, or a single session.
Model version covered: GPT-6.1 Terra (the original post also calls it Terra 6.1).
Test environment or client: ChatGPT Work; the author did not specify the operating system, exact client version, novel file format, or session settings.
Reasoning level and parameters: The author started with Medium, then switched to maximum; other parameters were not specified.
The author asked Work to read a novel chapter by chapter, record its analysis, and provide a comprehensive evaluation at the end. The author then proposed a step-by-step workflow: read one chapter at a time, add the analysis and conclusions to a working document, continue with subsequent chapters, and synthesize everything at the end. The author also asked it not to send progress reports and to deliver only the finished work.
The author says they repeated the instruction not to interrupt about five times, but Terra continued sending progress messages such as "Chapters 1–5 completed." The author first used the Medium reasoning level to observe efficiency and token consumption, then switched to the highest level in hopes of improving instruction following. The post does not identify the novel, provide the exact prompt, state the number of chapters or execution rounds, include conversation logs, or specify evaluation criteria.
The author's subjective report: Even after about five repeated reminders, the model sent another progress message; each time, it appeared to acknowledge the correction before repeating the behavior later.
The author says switching to the highest reasoning level did not noticeably improve instruction following and used up some usage allowance.
The workflow did not progress far enough to evaluate the literary analysis, and the author explicitly says they cannot assess its quality.
The author suggests this could be an early-release issue or an interaction between Terra and Work's agent orchestration, while acknowledging that session-specific factors cannot be ruled out. These are the author's hypotheses, not verified causes.
Task: Read a novel chapter by chapter, record analysis and conclusions, and provide a comprehensive evaluation at the end; do not report progress in the meantime.
Reported constraint violations: The author says the behavior continued after about five repeated reminders; no turn-by-turn logs or independent count were provided.
Reasoning levels: Medium, then maximum.
Quantitative metrics: No success rate, number of chapters completed, analysis quality rating, response time, token count, or amount of usage consumed was provided.
Comparison: The author says they had previously used Work for large writing and document tasks, and had used GPT-6 and Sol 6.1 for more complex tasks; no controlled test with the same prompt, novel, or environment was provided.
This is a field report of one user's experience. It may suggest a test case for whether constraints persist through a long workflow, but it is not an independent benchmark or a general performance finding.
The post includes no original conversation, complete input, or working document, so it is not possible to verify whether the model behaved as the author describes or independently reproduce the reported behavior.
The author could not evaluate the literary-analysis results. The evidence in this post concerns only the progress-reporting constraint and does not support conclusions about literary-analysis ability.
The author's observation that switching reasoning levels produced "no noticeable improvement" is subjective; the number of task rounds, time spent, and duration at each level are not given.
The author raises possible early-release, Work-orchestration, and session-specific factors, but provides no evidence confirming the root cause.
The original post does not disclose the novel, full prompt, turn-by-turn conversation, working document, runtime, or reproduction steps, so the reported behavior cannot be fully reproduced from it. To verify the phenomenon, one would need to run a multi-chapter document task in ChatGPT Work with the same model version, record the complete conversation and original instruction explicitly prohibiting interim updates, note the reasoning level and each instance of deviation, and report the author's experience separately from measured results. No independent retest was conducted for this article.
GPT-6.1 Terra
