{"slug": "gemini-4-argon", "name": "Gemini 4 Argon", "category": "ai", "category_name": "AI models and assistants", "description": "Google's Gemini 4 Argon large language model, available in the Gemini app and coding tools.", "recommenders": 5, "commenters": 14, "warners": 3, "score": 3.749, "rising": 5.0, "first": "2026-10-01", "latest": "2026-10-29", "why": "HN commenters like it for thorough, goal-focused work on hard technical problems, especially security and cryptanalysis research.", "why_is_quote": false, "has_verdict": true, "sentiment": {"recommend": 5, "neutral": 6, "compare": 0, "warn": 3}, "spark": [0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 5], "listed": true, "loved": ["Security research", "Thorough, goal-focused"], "caveat": "Usage limits", "short_quote": "it's become my daily driver for anything requiring moderate smarts or lots of prose", "icon": false, "domain": null, "github_repo": null, "official_url": "", "pricing": "paid", "aliases": ["Gemini 4 Argon"], "verdict": [{"text": "HN commenters like it for thorough, goal-focused work on hard technical problems,", "cites": [{"id": 804561280, "item_id": 50285080, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50285080", "by": "bitexploder", "date": "2026-10-29", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "It feels like it gets things done better than Opus 5.5.", "excerpt": "I have ended up using Argon more and more. If you keep it grounded it is a great model. Extremely thorough. A little slow. It feels like it gets things done better than Opus 5.5. It slowly churns through everything. Not necessarily quality but its adherence to goals seems better and it takes less prompting. For cyber use cases I am absolutely blown away. Can\u2019t say much more, but it is a serious model. Just my opinion", "context": "", "use_case": "coding and cyber use cases", "switched_from": "", "story": "Gemini 4 Carbon"}, {"id": 801194496, "item_id": 50074656, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50074656", "by": "eluusive", "date": "2026-10-13", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Just switched, and it seems to be much better.", "excerpt": "Just switched, and it seems to be much better. I'm hoping it stops lying. I have Pro max subs for Claude, Codex, Grok, and Google AI... I was forced into using Google by running out of credits elsewhere. I have found that Gemini often claims it did something, but didn't actually complete the task. I just had 3.8 Flash do a major refactor -- that never should have needed to be done in the first place -- and switched t", "context": "has Pro max subs for Claude, Codex, Grok, and Google AI", "use_case": "code review", "switched_from": "Gemini 3.8 Flash", "story": "Gemini 4 Argon"}]}, {"text": " especially security and cryptanalysis research.", "cites": [{"id": 802900736, "item_id": 50181296, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50181296", "by": "tchalla", "date": "2026-10-21", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Gemini 4 Argon made an invaluable contribution to finding the vulnerability, exploit development, attack detection, and validation of the patch.", "excerpt": "> We used Wiz Atlas, Gemini 4 Argon and GPT-5.6 Sol throughout this research. Notably, Gemini 4 Argon made an invaluable contribution to finding the vulnerability, exploit development, attack detection, and validation of the patch.", "context": "", "use_case": "vulnerability research", "switched_from": "", "story": "PHP2Shell: AI uncovers critical RCE in PHP"}, {"id": 801308897, "item_id": 50081806, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50081806", "by": "wslh", "date": "2026-10-14", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Impressive!", "excerpt": "Impressive! Previous to Argon I instructed Claude to find preimages in 19 rounds of SHA-256 (with padding) [1], then tried to move to 20 rounds (no padding) where it couldn't beat ~2^45 table lookups, and Argon found preimages in ~2^33 (no padding) [2]. [1] https://github.com/srw/sha256-19step-preimages-with-padding [2] https://github.com/srw/sha256-20step-preimages-with-no-padding", "context": "", "use_case": "cryptanalysis research", "switched_from": "Claude", "story": "Gemini 4 Argon"}, {"id": 804561280, "item_id": 50285080, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50285080", "by": "bitexploder", "date": "2026-10-29", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "It feels like it gets things done better than Opus 5.5.", "excerpt": "I have ended up using Argon more and more. If you keep it grounded it is a great model. Extremely thorough. A little slow. It feels like it gets things done better than Opus 5.5. It slowly churns through everything. Not necessarily quality but its adherence to goals seems better and it takes less prompting. For cyber use cases I am absolutely blown away. Can\u2019t say much more, but it is a serious model. Just my opinion", "context": "", "use_case": "coding and cyber use cases", "switched_from": "", "story": "Gemini 4 Carbon"}]}, {"text": " The most common complaint is that it uses up usage quotas after only a few exchanges,", "cites": [{"id": 804566801, "item_id": 50285425, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50285425", "by": "spockz", "date": "2026-10-29", "stance": "warn", "quote": "When I ask the same question to Argon it is 50% of my weekly usage limit gone.", "excerpt": "I\u2019m using the default anti gravity setup. 3.8 medium is my daily driver. This gets me pretty far. (Definitely not as far as Luna and Sol). When I ask the same question to Argon it is 50% of my weekly usage limit gone. So either the usage limit is really a lot smaller or somehow argon thinks a whole lot more even for simple tasks.", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Gemini 4 Carbon"}, {"id": 804519377, "item_id": 50282461, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50282461", "by": "llm_nerd", "date": "2026-10-28", "stance": "warn", "quote": "One brief conversation, with three exchanges, and my quota was exhausted", "excerpt": "I only use Pro for Google as their models were so far behind, but I tried to give Argon a go, and notably it is only available in the chat interface. One brief conversation, with three exchanges, and my quota was exhausted and it restricted me to Flash-lite for the rest of the day. Rather comical stuff. And it prompts me to upgrade to Ultra for \"5x more usage\". In contrast I use my Claude Max plan endlessly, on enorm", "context": "", "use_case": "chat", "switched_from": "", "story": "Gemini 4 Carbon"}]}, {"text": " and it suits long-running tasks better than quick interactive chat.", "cites": [{"id": 798848416, "item_id": 49928026, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49928026", "by": "wmedrano", "date": "2026-10-01", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "The model (at least on the settings I used) was not for interactive chatting. It was for longer running tasks.", "excerpt": "The model (at least on the settings I used) was not for interactive chatting. It was for longer running tasks. Edit: my view is probably tainted by the fact that I only used it at work for work with Antigravity CLI", "context": "", "use_case": "long-running work tasks", "switched_from": "", "story": "Gemini 4 Argon"}, {"id": 804561280, "item_id": 50285080, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50285080", "by": "bitexploder", "date": "2026-10-29", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "It feels like it gets things done better than Opus 5.5.", "excerpt": "I have ended up using Argon more and more. If you keep it grounded it is a great model. Extremely thorough. A little slow. It feels like it gets things done better than Opus 5.5. It slowly churns through everything. Not necessarily quality but its adherence to goals seems better and it takes less prompting. For cyber use cases I am absolutely blown away. Can\u2019t say much more, but it is a serious model. Just my opinion", "context": "", "use_case": "coding and cyber use cases", "switched_from": "", "story": "Gemini 4 Carbon"}]}], "praise": [{"label": "Security research", "summary": "Commenters credit it with strong results in vulnerability research and cryptanalysis.", "quotes": [{"id": 802900736, "item_id": 50181296, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50181296", "by": "tchalla", "date": "2026-10-21", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Gemini 4 Argon made an invaluable contribution to finding the vulnerability, exploit development, attack detection, and validation of the patch.", "excerpt": "> We used Wiz Atlas, Gemini 4 Argon and GPT-5.6 Sol throughout this research. Notably, Gemini 4 Argon made an invaluable contribution to finding the vulnerability, exploit development, attack detection, and validation of the patch.", "context": "", "use_case": "vulnerability research", "switched_from": "", "story": "PHP2Shell: AI uncovers critical RCE in PHP"}, {"id": 804561280, "item_id": 50285080, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50285080", "by": "bitexploder", "date": "2026-10-29", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "It feels like it gets things done better than Opus 5.5.", "excerpt": "I have ended up using Argon more and more. If you keep it grounded it is a great model. Extremely thorough. A little slow. It feels like it gets things done better than Opus 5.5. It slowly churns through everything. Not necessarily quality but its adherence to goals seems better and it takes less prompting. For cyber use cases I am absolutely blown away. Can\u2019t say much more, but it is a serious model. Just my opinion", "context": "", "use_case": "coding and cyber use cases", "switched_from": "", "story": "Gemini 4 Carbon"}, {"id": 801308897, "item_id": 50081806, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50081806", "by": "wslh", "date": "2026-10-14", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Impressive!", "excerpt": "Impressive! Previous to Argon I instructed Claude to find preimages in 19 rounds of SHA-256 (with padding) [1], then tried to move to 20 rounds (no padding) where it couldn't beat ~2^45 table lookups, and Argon found preimages in ~2^33 (no padding) [2]. [1] https://github.com/srw/sha256-19step-preimages-with-padding [2] https://github.com/srw/sha256-20step-preimages-with-no-padding", "context": "", "use_case": "cryptanalysis research", "switched_from": "Claude", "story": "Gemini 4 Argon"}]}, {"label": "Thorough, goal-focused", "summary": "It is described as extremely thorough, sticking to goals with less prompting and catching work other models faked.", "quotes": [{"id": 804561280, "item_id": 50285080, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50285080", "by": "bitexploder", "date": "2026-10-29", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "It feels like it gets things done better than Opus 5.5.", "excerpt": "I have ended up using Argon more and more. If you keep it grounded it is a great model. Extremely thorough. A little slow. It feels like it gets things done better than Opus 5.5. It slowly churns through everything. Not necessarily quality but its adherence to goals seems better and it takes less prompting. For cyber use cases I am absolutely blown away. Can\u2019t say much more, but it is a serious model. Just my opinion", "context": "", "use_case": "coding and cyber use cases", "switched_from": "", "story": "Gemini 4 Carbon"}, {"id": 801194496, "item_id": 50074656, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50074656", "by": "eluusive", "date": "2026-10-13", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Just switched, and it seems to be much better.", "excerpt": "Just switched, and it seems to be much better. I'm hoping it stops lying. I have Pro max subs for Claude, Codex, Grok, and Google AI... I was forced into using Google by running out of credits elsewhere. I have found that Gemini often claims it did something, but didn't actually complete the task. I just had 3.8 Flash do a major refactor -- that never should have needed to be done in the first place -- and switched t", "context": "has Pro max subs for Claude, Codex, Grok, and Google AI", "use_case": "code review", "switched_from": "Gemini 3.8 Flash", "story": "Gemini 4 Argon"}]}, {"label": "Hard research problems", "summary": "Users have set it on difficult open-ended problems like SHA-256 preimages and the Voynich manuscript.", "quotes": [{"id": 801308897, "item_id": 50081806, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50081806", "by": "wslh", "date": "2026-10-14", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Impressive!", "excerpt": "Impressive! Previous to Argon I instructed Claude to find preimages in 19 rounds of SHA-256 (with padding) [1], then tried to move to 20 rounds (no padding) where it couldn't beat ~2^45 table lookups, and Argon found preimages in ~2^33 (no padding) [2]. [1] https://github.com/srw/sha256-19step-preimages-with-padding [2] https://github.com/srw/sha256-20step-preimages-with-no-padding", "context": "", "use_case": "cryptanalysis research", "switched_from": "Claude", "story": "Gemini 4 Argon"}, {"id": 801190192, "item_id": 50074387, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50074387", "by": "d2kx", "date": "2026-10-13", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "It's a great model.", "excerpt": "It's a great model. I have had it trying to decrypt the Voynich manuscript for the past couple of days without being biased by other research/other people's attempts. If anyone is interested: https://github.com/d2kx/voynich-research", "context": "", "use_case": "decrypting Voynich manuscript", "switched_from": "", "story": "Gemini 4 Argon"}]}, {"label": "Daily driver", "summary": "One user made it their default for tasks needing moderate smarts or lots of prose.", "quotes": [{"id": 804513889, "item_id": 50282118, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50282118", "by": "teach", "date": "2026-10-28", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "it's become my daily driver for anything requiring moderate smarts or lots of prose", "excerpt": "Yeah I was using Argon in Cursor on launch day and it's become my daily driver for anything requiring moderate smarts or lots of prose. Not surprising that Cursor is better at charging money for something that isn't an ad.", "context": "", "use_case": "general tasks and prose", "switched_from": "", "story": "Gemini 4 Carbon"}]}], "caveats": [{"label": "Usage limits", "summary": "A single question or brief conversation can exhaust a large share of the usage quota.", "quotes": [{"id": 804566801, "item_id": 50285425, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50285425", "by": "spockz", "date": "2026-10-29", "stance": "warn", "quote": "When I ask the same question to Argon it is 50% of my weekly usage limit gone.", "excerpt": "I\u2019m using the default anti gravity setup. 3.8 medium is my daily driver. This gets me pretty far. (Definitely not as far as Luna and Sol). When I ask the same question to Argon it is 50% of my weekly usage limit gone. So either the usage limit is really a lot smaller or somehow argon thinks a whole lot more even for simple tasks.", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Gemini 4 Carbon"}, {"id": 804519377, "item_id": 50282461, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50282461", "by": "llm_nerd", "date": "2026-10-28", "stance": "warn", "quote": "One brief conversation, with three exchanges, and my quota was exhausted", "excerpt": "I only use Pro for Google as their models were so far behind, but I tried to give Argon a go, and notably it is only available in the chat interface. One brief conversation, with three exchanges, and my quota was exhausted and it restricted me to Flash-lite for the rest of the day. Rather comical stuff. And it prompts me to upgrade to Ultra for \"5x more usage\". In contrast I use my Claude Max plan endlessly, on enorm", "context": "", "use_case": "chat", "switched_from": "", "story": "Gemini 4 Carbon"}]}, {"label": "Slow", "summary": "It is described as a little slow and better for long-running tasks than interactive chat.", "quotes": [{"id": 804561280, "item_id": 50285080, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50285080", "by": "bitexploder", "date": "2026-10-29", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "It feels like it gets things done better than Opus 5.5.", "excerpt": "I have ended up using Argon more and more. If you keep it grounded it is a great model. Extremely thorough. A little slow. It feels like it gets things done better than Opus 5.5. It slowly churns through everything. Not necessarily quality but its adherence to goals seems better and it takes less prompting. For cyber use cases I am absolutely blown away. Can\u2019t say much more, but it is a serious model. Just my opinion", "context": "", "use_case": "coding and cyber use cases", "switched_from": "", "story": "Gemini 4 Carbon"}, {"id": 798848416, "item_id": 49928026, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49928026", "by": "wmedrano", "date": "2026-10-01", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "The model (at least on the settings I used) was not for interactive chatting. It was for longer running tasks.", "excerpt": "The model (at least on the settings I used) was not for interactive chatting. It was for longer running tasks. Edit: my view is probably tainted by the fact that I only used it at work for work with Antigravity CLI", "context": "", "use_case": "long-running work tasks", "switched_from": "", "story": "Gemini 4 Argon"}]}, {"label": "Limited availability", "summary": "Early users hit 404 errors during a gradual rollout, and one found it only in the chat interface.", "quotes": [{"id": 801191904, "item_id": 50074494, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50074494", "by": "freakynit", "date": "2026-10-13", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "tried argon 4, keeps failing with 404", "excerpt": "Im on pro, installed gemini app, tried argon 4, keeps failing with 404, resource now found. Switched to gemini-3.8-flash in same session... worked. It seems to be rolling out gradually.. not available at once to everyone.", "context": "Gemini Pro subscriber", "use_case": "Gemini app", "switched_from": "", "story": "Gemini 4 Argon"}, {"id": 804519377, "item_id": 50282461, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50282461", "by": "llm_nerd", "date": "2026-10-28", "stance": "warn", "quote": "One brief conversation, with three exchanges, and my quota was exhausted", "excerpt": "I only use Pro for Google as their models were so far behind, but I tried to give Argon a go, and notably it is only available in the chat interface. One brief conversation, with three exchanges, and my quota was exhausted and it restricted me to Flash-lite for the rest of the day. Rather comical stuff. And it prompts me to upgrade to Ultra for \"5x more usage\". In contrast I use my Claude Max plan endlessly, on enorm", "context": "", "use_case": "chat", "switched_from": "", "story": "Gemini 4 Carbon"}]}, {"label": "Underwhelming intelligence", "summary": "One commenter found it no smarter than other frontier models.", "quotes": [{"id": 804462737, "item_id": 50278921, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50278921", "by": "5555watch", "date": "2026-10-28", "stance": "warn", "quote": "felt very much the same as any other Frontier, just without the intelligence", "excerpt": "I loved Gemini 3.1 Pro and it was very sad when they nerfed it at around May this year. I think it did pretty good as a chat, and quite decent on Antigravity (tried very little). Been sitting on 5.6 / Astra and Codex since. Occasionally do bring up the 3.1 Pro through the API, because I love the writing style, but keep noticing that I'm much more productive with the frontier, despite the love to Gemini. Tried 4 Argon", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Gemini 4 Carbon"}]}], "who": [{"by": "nater5000", "context": "software and data engineer", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50278255", "date": "2026-10-28"}, {"by": "eluusive", "context": "has Pro max subs for Claude, Codex, Grok, and Google AI", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50074656", "date": "2026-10-13"}, {"by": "freakynit", "context": "Gemini Pro subscriber", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50074494", "date": "2026-10-13"}], "tags": ["for security research", "for long-running tasks", "for software engineering", "for cryptanalysis"], "use_cases": ["project work with high thinking", "coding and cyber use cases", "chat", "general tasks and prose", "editing benchmark image", "software and data engineering"], "compared": [{"slug": "gemini-flash", "name": "Gemini Flash", "co": 3, "switched_from": 1, "switched_to": 1}, {"slug": "claude", "name": "Claude", "co": 2, "switched_from": 1, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "claude-opus", "name": "Claude Opus", "co": 4, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "codex", "name": "Codex", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}], "makers": [{"id": 801212832, "item_id": 50075802, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50075802", "by": "asdfman123", "date": "2026-10-13", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I prefer Argon over Opus 5.5 because of the clear thinking and directness.", "excerpt": "I've been using it for a while internally at Google. I prefer Argon over Opus 5.5 because of the clear thinking and directness. It phrases things in an organized, straightforward way.", "context": "uses it internally at Google", "use_case": "general LLM use", "switched_from": "", "story": "Gemini 4 Argon"}, {"id": 798630592, "item_id": 49914412, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49914412", "by": "bitexploder", "date": "2026-09-30", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I have been using this model for a bit. I would say it is a good model", "excerpt": "Opinions my own but I have been using this model for a bit. I would say it is a good model and the skill with which people use AI varies widely.", "context": "says \"Opinions my own\"", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Gemini 4 Argon"}], "threads": [{"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50276792", "title": "Gemini 4 Carbon", "mentions": 7}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50073879", "title": "Gemini 4 Argon", "mentions": 5}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49913571", "title": "Gemini 4 Argon", "mentions": 2}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50288019", "title": "Gemini 4 Carbon is the new #1 on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index v5", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50180836", "title": "PHP2Shell: AI uncovers critical RCE in PHP", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50059115", "title": "Muse Wonder", "mentions": 1}], "sentiment_by_month": {"2025-11": {}, "2025-12": {}, "2026-01": {}, "2026-02": {}, "2026-03": {}, "2026-04": {}, "2026-05": {}, "2026-06": {}, "2026-07": {}, "2026-08": {}, "2026-09": {}, "2026-10": {"neutral": 6, "recommend": 5, "warn": 3}}, "quotes": [{"id": 804635936, "item_id": 50289746, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50289746", "by": "WarmWash", "date": "2026-10-29", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I have been using it on the $20 and still have 25% left", "excerpt": "The $20 plan gives you ~120 minutes of high thinking time from Argon weekly. Thinking time isn't an exact metric, context size matters a lot, but I have been using it on the $20 and still have 25% left with ~85 minutes of thinking time on high for a project I have been working on.", "context": "", "use_case": "project work with high thinking", "switched_from": "", "story": "Gemini 4 Carbon is the new #1 on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index v5"}, {"id": 804566801, "item_id": 50285425, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50285425", "by": "spockz", "date": "2026-10-29", "stance": "warn", "quote": "When I ask the same question to Argon it is 50% of my weekly usage limit gone.", "excerpt": "I\u2019m using the default anti gravity setup. 3.8 medium is my daily driver. This gets me pretty far. (Definitely not as far as Luna and Sol). When I ask the same question to Argon it is 50% of my weekly usage limit gone. So either the usage limit is really a lot smaller or somehow argon thinks a whole lot more even for simple tasks.", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Gemini 4 Carbon"}, {"id": 804561280, "item_id": 50285080, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50285080", "by": "bitexploder", "date": "2026-10-29", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "It feels like it gets things done better than Opus 5.5.", "excerpt": "I have ended up using Argon more and more. If you keep it grounded it is a great model. Extremely thorough. A little slow. It feels like it gets things done better than Opus 5.5. It slowly churns through everything. Not necessarily quality but its adherence to goals seems better and it takes less prompting. For cyber use cases I am absolutely blown away. Can\u2019t say much more, but it is a serious model. Just my opinion", "context": "", "use_case": "coding and cyber use cases", "switched_from": "", "story": "Gemini 4 Carbon"}, {"id": 804519377, "item_id": 50282461, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50282461", "by": "llm_nerd", "date": "2026-10-28", "stance": "warn", "quote": "One brief conversation, with three exchanges, and my quota was exhausted", "excerpt": "I only use Pro for Google as their models were so far behind, but I tried to give Argon a go, and notably it is only available in the chat interface. One brief conversation, with three exchanges, and my quota was exhausted and it restricted me to Flash-lite for the rest of the day. Rather comical stuff. And it prompts me to upgrade to Ultra for \"5x more usage\". In contrast I use my Claude Max plan endlessly, on enorm", "context": "", "use_case": "chat", "switched_from": "", "story": "Gemini 4 Carbon"}, {"id": 804513889, "item_id": 50282118, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50282118", "by": "teach", "date": "2026-10-28", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "it's become my daily driver for anything requiring moderate smarts or lots of prose", "excerpt": "Yeah I was using Argon in Cursor on launch day and it's become my daily driver for anything requiring moderate smarts or lots of prose. Not surprising that Cursor is better at charging money for something that isn't an ad.", "context": "", "use_case": "general tasks and prose", "switched_from": "", "story": "Gemini 4 Carbon"}, {"id": 804494912, "item_id": 50280932, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50280932", "by": "gavinray", "date": "2026-10-28", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I used Gemini 4 Argon (High) from the Android app with the original image", "excerpt": "I used Gemini 4 Argon (High) from the Android app with the original image and following prompt: > \"Edit this image to color code the benchmarks scores using a gradient scheme that is immediately obvious\" Here's the direct Gemini chat link: https://share.gemini.google/g6LC7spTH0cO", "context": "", "use_case": "editing benchmark image", "switched_from": "", "story": "Gemini 4 Carbon"}, {"id": 804462737, "item_id": 50278921, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50278921", "by": "5555watch", "date": "2026-10-28", "stance": "warn", "quote": "felt very much the same as any other Frontier, just without the intelligence", "excerpt": "I loved Gemini 3.1 Pro and it was very sad when they nerfed it at around May this year. I think it did pretty good as a chat, and quite decent on Antigravity (tried very little). Been sitting on 5.6 / Astra and Codex since. Occasionally do bring up the 3.1 Pro through the API, because I love the writing style, but keep noticing that I'm much more productive with the frontier, despite the love to Gemini. Tried 4 Argon", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Gemini 4 Carbon"}, {"id": 804452080, "item_id": 50278255, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50278255", "by": "nater5000", "date": "2026-10-28", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "it's possible that Argon is well-suited for the work I do but not for other tasks", "excerpt": "Well, my perspective is somewhat narrow (I use it primarily for software engineering and pretty technical data engineering work), so it's possible that Argon is well-suited for the work I do but not for other tasks. I suppose it's just more data points to consider.", "context": "software and data engineer", "use_case": "software and data engineering", "switched_from": "", "story": "Gemini 4 Carbon"}, {"id": 802900736, "item_id": 50181296, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50181296", "by": "tchalla", "date": "2026-10-21", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Gemini 4 Argon made an invaluable contribution to finding the vulnerability, exploit development, attack detection, and validation of the patch.", "excerpt": "> We used Wiz Atlas, Gemini 4 Argon and GPT-5.6 Sol throughout this research. Notably, Gemini 4 Argon made an invaluable contribution to finding the vulnerability, exploit development, attack detection, and validation of the patch.", "context": "", "use_case": "vulnerability research", "switched_from": "", "story": "PHP2Shell: AI uncovers critical RCE in PHP"}, {"id": 801308897, "item_id": 50081806, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50081806", "by": "wslh", "date": "2026-10-14", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Impressive!", "excerpt": "Impressive! Previous to Argon I instructed Claude to find preimages in 19 rounds of SHA-256 (with padding) [1], then tried to move to 20 rounds (no padding) where it couldn't beat ~2^45 table lookups, and Argon found preimages in ~2^33 (no padding) [2]. [1] https://github.com/srw/sha256-19step-preimages-with-padding [2] https://github.com/srw/sha256-20step-preimages-with-no-padding", "context": "", "use_case": "cryptanalysis research", "switched_from": "Claude", "story": "Gemini 4 Argon"}, {"id": 801194496, "item_id": 50074656, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50074656", "by": "eluusive", "date": "2026-10-13", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Just switched, and it seems to be much better.", "excerpt": "Just switched, and it seems to be much better. I'm hoping it stops lying. I have Pro max subs for Claude, Codex, Grok, and Google AI... I was forced into using Google by running out of credits elsewhere. I have found that Gemini often claims it did something, but didn't actually complete the task. I just had 3.8 Flash do a major refactor -- that never should have needed to be done in the first place -- and switched t", "context": "has Pro max subs for Claude, Codex, Grok, and Google AI", "use_case": "code review", "switched_from": "Gemini 3.8 Flash", "story": "Gemini 4 Argon"}, {"id": 801191904, "item_id": 50074494, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50074494", "by": "freakynit", "date": "2026-10-13", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "tried argon 4, keeps failing with 404", "excerpt": "Im on pro, installed gemini app, tried argon 4, keeps failing with 404, resource now found. Switched to gemini-3.8-flash in same session... worked. It seems to be rolling out gradually.. not available at once to everyone.", "context": "Gemini Pro subscriber", "use_case": "Gemini app", "switched_from": "", "story": "Gemini 4 Argon"}, {"id": 801190192, "item_id": 50074387, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50074387", "by": "d2kx", "date": "2026-10-13", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "It's a great model.", "excerpt": "It's a great model. I have had it trying to decrypt the Voynich manuscript for the past couple of days without being biased by other research/other people's attempts. If anyone is interested: https://github.com/d2kx/voynich-research", "context": "", "use_case": "decrypting Voynich manuscript", "switched_from": "", "story": "Gemini 4 Argon"}, {"id": 801003826, "item_id": 50062739, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50062739", "by": "mattlondon", "date": "2026-10-12", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Gemini 4 Argon release a few days ago was frontier a few days ago.", "excerpt": "Gemini 4 Argon release a few days ago was frontier a few days ago. Things move fast. I think some of the benchmarks that Meta didn't pick show Gemini 4 Argon ahead but really the benchmarks are not that great any more and getting increasingly disconnected from reality as people search for \"headroom\" in the evals to avoid saturation I think. Opus 5.5 is \"top\" for example but I really dislike the way it talks to me (it", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Muse Wonder"}, {"id": 798848416, "item_id": 49928026, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49928026", "by": "wmedrano", "date": "2026-10-01", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "The model (at least on the settings I used) was not for interactive chatting. It was for longer running tasks.", "excerpt": "The model (at least on the settings I used) was not for interactive chatting. It was for longer running tasks. Edit: my view is probably tainted by the fact that I only used it at work for work with Antigravity CLI", "context": "", "use_case": "long-running work tasks", "switched_from": "", "story": "Gemini 4 Argon"}]}