OpenAI Launches an API That Only Answers Yes, No, or a Number

OpenAI has launched the Decisions API, a dedicated endpoint built specifically for automated decisions. It accepts text or images and returns only one of three things: a yes/no answer, a pick from a list of set categories, or a score on a scale. OpenAI says it runs about ten times faster than its existing Responses API, the endpoint used for full written answers. It costs $0.10 per million input tokens, the chunks of text the system reads, and output tokens are free. For now it works with only one model, gpt-6-luna, which is still in public beta, the testing stage before a full release. It already meets HIPAA and other US and European rules for handling medical data.

A tool like this only makes sense for narrow tasks. Think sorting customer messages into categories, or checking photos for damage, where a fast, cheap answer beats a detailed one. It is not built for AI agent tasks, where the system needs to understand the whole job and act on its own, rather than pick from three fixed answer types. For companies running a high volume of repetitive checks, free output tokens and a ten-cent input price could cut the cost of routine classification quite a bit.