Reducing Image Context Cost in Codex — Cutting Tokens with 32×32 Patches and detail: low / high / original on GPT-6.1, GPT-6, and GPT-5.6 Models

When you keep pasting screenshots into Codex, the context runs down faster than expected. Among the GPT-6.1, GPT-6, and GPT-5.6 models Codex ships with as of November 2026, the ones in OpenAI's official guide (GPT-6-Astra and the GPT-5.6 family) use the 32×32 px patch method with a `detail` parameter and a 30,000-patch per-image cap. This post walks through the math, then orders the practical options (detail switching, downscaling, cropping, and text substitution) by how much they actually help.