Three unannounced 'aurora-alpha' models appear in OpenAI's API
Spotted by developers, then pulled within hours — no docs, no way to call them. The IDs hint at new Codex or GPT-6 tiers, but every read is a guess.
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Three IDs, zero docs
aurora-red-alpha, aurora-green-alpha and aurora-blue-alpha surfaced in OpenAI's API tagged only 'alpha' — no documentation, pricing, context window or changelog entry, and no comment from OpenAI. An 'aurora-alpha' ID had quietly appeared on OpenRouter back in February.
Up briefly, then gone
Andrew Curran flagged the sighting — his post cleared 30k+ views — and it spread before the IDs were pulled within hours. No one has shown a successful call, so they were never generally available; betting on testing these exact models soon is a long shot.
What they might be — all guesses
Leading theories are specialized Codex coding models or faster GPT-6 inference tiers; @scaling01 ties the older OpenRouter aurora-alpha to a 'GPT-5.3-Codex-Spark' variant. Others read it as an accidental rollout, and one reply claims a color is an image model. Nothing is confirmed.
What it means for you
There's nothing to call today — the real signal is that an OpenAI release is close, most likely Codex-flavored. If you pin model IDs in CI or poll /v1/models, watch for new aurora-* entries, and never wire production to an alpha ID that can vanish overnight.