Changing an endpoint and calling the migration done is a good way to learn the rest of the contract from a user's error. OpenAI recorded the removal of DALL·E 2 and DALL·E 3 from its API in May 2026. For applications using those calls, the immediate question is where the generated image goes next. The code is still there, waiting for a response.
I am revisiting that news after a tool switch that annoyed me in September 2026. I was moving from Claude to Codex. I considered the model better, but Claude provided the better experience on that work, and I asked for an investigation. The new name had not fixed the route to a finished task. That friction explains my distrust of migrations described as a simple provider swap.
For a hypothetical image integration, start with the user's request. Do they wait on the same screen or return later to collect the file? Does the application keep a reference or deliver the image directly? Those answers establish what a replacement has to support. Picking the fashionable API first and discovering these details afterward reverses the work.
I also want to account for existing output. Removing a generation endpoint is not an instruction to delete old images or rewrite every reference in the application. What happens to those files depends on how they were stored. Mixing existing material with new generation expands the change without explaining why. A migration already supplies plenty of work, thanks.
In August 2026, I had asked for a Codex agent to work alongside Claude. I like combining tools. But an alternative needs the right input and must return something the next step can use. If I have to reconstruct that connection manually, the migration is still ahead of me, even with two working accounts.
Retirement is also a useful time to remove behavior that has lost its purpose. Preserving something people need makes sense. Recreating every old detail by reflex carries unnecessary work into another service. That decision starts with how the feature is used, before choosing a library.
My rule for migrating an image generator is to locate its callers and the consumers of its response, separate existing files from new generation, and define the behavior that must survive. Then I choose the replacement. I call the migration done when the request makes it through that whole path.