This was originally going to be a short post about one week with Codex. But after a discussion on a chat forum about favorite coding agents, I realized I wasn’t a Codex fan because it was Codex and had some magical ability. No, it was the unification of several tools from OpenAI: ChatGPT, CodexCLI, and Codex Desktop.
This article from OpenAI about Codex’s app server came around the time that Clawdbot took off and the contrast in the two toolsets struck me as odd yet familiar. It feels very much like an Android vs Apple showdown. Clawdbot lets you install and infinitely customize to your heart’s content: connect anything and everything to your choice of systems: both computing platform and communications platforms of choice. It’s completely up to you. It’s also, completely up to you. Security, iteration, development, etc.
Contrast that with OpenAI’s approach: interconnected tools with the ability to easily switch between. Codex CLI, Codex Web, and Codex for Mac. Integrated with ChatGPT and a limited, but user friendly set of tools. Very Apple.
I, personally, fall in camp Apple. I like the guardrails. The training wheels. I know enough to get myself in trouble and I want enough to stay out of trouble. For the most part, I can do that in an intuitive way with Codex and ChatGPT. I can upload and organize a file set and projects with ChatGPT. The pretty colors for icons make me happy (yes, I am that simple of a man).
I can do my research, drag and drop into folders, and get helpful suggestions. I can add in memories, update my preferences and overall, slowly but surely customize the experience to my level of comfort. I even recently upgraded to a business license and was able to find easily accessible guides on how to migrate everything from my initial Pro plan to Business….there was a Button! So user friendly!
And Codex. Oh how I love Codex.
I love plan mode on the web.
It took me longer than I care to admit to learn a simple learning hack: fork a repo from a developer whose work you are curious about. Point Codex Web at the forked repo, and ask as many questions as you can to understand what’s going on. Ask about how it works, why it works, what the architectural principles are. Ask if it’s useful for your life (it pulls in your ChatGPT profile and memories as part of its assessment – which, for me, eloquently outlines my baseline need for explaining things like im five).
And if you so choose, connect Github and build! The environment management, branch management are wonderful. Yes, it should be baked into every developers workflow. But I am not a developer. I am two raccoons and a lost toddler in a trench coat somehow gainfully employed in 21st century America.
And with that hard earned trust, I was persuaded to push my comfort zone into Codex CLI. Easy install, easy troubleshooting (python is mapped as python3 on my computer and doesn’t like npm for some reason), and together, we built things.
I thoroughly enjoyed using the CLI. All the articles that I had read about “it’s all just files, man” and “TUI is the way to go”
(TUI = Terminal UI…yes, it took me forever to decipher that one as well)
We researched things. We built skills one at a time together. We worked on context windows and compaction and orchestration.
I was even delicately handheld through setting up my first MCP and using it to create my Notion EOD log (see: Codex Codex on the Wall…)
It all just….worked.
In what I believe to be an extremely controversial take, I will say I loved NOT drowning in the chaos of the Claude Code universe: the skills vs agent debates, the Ralph loop hysteria, the multi-agent orchestration empires currently ruled over by Clawdbot and Gas Town and the like. It feels like listening to an F1 crew trying to convey wisdom to a newly licensed teen driver. You’re wisened, experienced, and trying to be helpful…I’m just trying to merge onto the highway and not die (both from an accident…and from embarrassment).
I’m a simple guy:
I like having a job where I sit at a computer and say things and somehow it pays my mortgage and affords me time and resources to blather on the internet like someone’s listening.
I like the potential and promise of AI. It truly fascinates me that a corpus of knowledge of a species has been aggregated into a form that is accessible faster than the neurological constructs that produced it. It’s Fucking Wild.
And, I like building cool shit with cool people.
But, I’m an amateur. I’m not yet at a level where I can generate an ROI on my AI work, and I certainly don’t have the ears of any VCs. I don’t think I’m unique either.
And so when Codex came out with the Desktop app, I was curious, and then thrilled. It not only was the desktop GUI experience that I didn’t know I needed, but it also bridged the web and CLI worlds so smoothly. My skills showed up! My planning showed up! My development work to date showed up!
Could this have been done in other tools? absolutely. But with the Codex app, it was all there, done for me from day one. Again, it just worked. The baseline is taken care of. And with that I can take the advice of the pros: pick a tool and master it. I can move up one ladder with Codex a rung at a time.
And eventually, see the forest for the trees.