10 ms·

GPT-5-Codex

396 points by meetpateltech 1y ago

esafak 1y ago
Do they demand biometrics to use it?
incomingpain 1y ago
Still waiting on codex cli to support lm studio.
- NitpickLawyer 1y ago
  ? Isn't lmstudio API openai compatible? Codex cli already supports 3rd party models, you have to edit the config yaml file, and you can add many model providers.
  - incomingpain 1y ago
    I never managed to get it to work. I used chatgpt to try to do it for me :)
    - NitpickLawyer 1y ago
      This is how I did it - https://github.com/openai/codex/blob/main/docs/config.md#model_providers https://github.com/openai/codex/blob/main/docs/config.md#mod... I have it go to openrouter, and then you just export the API key and run codex, works smoothly.
Tiberium 1y ago
Only an 1.7% upgrade on SWE-Bench compared to GPT-5, but 33.9 vs 51.3% on their internal code refactoring benchmark. This seems like an Opus 4.1-like upgrade, which is nice to see and means they're serious about Codex.
alvis 1y ago
It's interest to see this quote: `for the bottom 10% of user turns sorted by model-generated tokens (including hidden reasoning and final output), GPT‑5-Codex uses 93.7% fewer tokens than GPT‑5` It sounds like it can make simple tasks much more correct. It's impressive to me. Today coding agent tends to pretend they're working hard by generating lots of unnecessary code. Hope it's true
- arresin 1y ago
  This is my issue with gpt-5. If you use the low or medium reasoning it’s garbage. If you use high, it’ll think for up to five minutes on something dead simple.
  - srcreigh 1y ago
    Can you be more specific about what type of code you're talking about, and what makes it garbage? I'm happy with medium reasoning. My projects have been in Go, Typescript, React Dockerfiles stuff like that. The code almost always works, it's usually not "Clean code" though.
jumploops 1y ago
Interesting, the new model's prompt is ~half the size (10KB vs. 23KB) of the previous prompt[0][1]. SWE-bench performance is similar to normal gpt-5, so it seems the main delta with `gpt-5-codex` is on code refactors (via internal refactor benchmark 33.9% -> 51.3%). As someone who recently used Codex CLI (`gpt-5-high`) to do a relatively large refactor (multiple internal libs to dedicated packages), I kept running into bugs introduced when the model would delete a file and then rewrite in (missing crucial or important details). My approach would have been to just the copy the file over and then make package-specific changes, so maybe better tool calling is at play here. Additionally, they claim the new model is more steerable (both with AGENTS.md and generally). In my experience, Codex CLI w/gpt-5 is already a lot more steerable than Claude Code, but any improvements are welcome! [0]https://github.com/openai/codex/blob/main/codex-rs/core/gpt_5_codex_prompt.md https://github.com/openai/codex/blob/main/codex-rs/core/gpt_... [1]https://github.com/openai/codex/blob/main/codex-rs/core/prompt.md https://github.com/openai/codex/blob/main/codex-rs/core/prom...
- pants2 1y ago
  Interestingly, "more steerable" can sometimes be a bad thing, as it will tend to follow your prompt to the letter even if that's against your interests. It requires better prompting and generally knowing what you're doing - might be worse for vibe-coders and better for experienced SWEs.
  - htrp 1y ago
    think they're indexing here for professional work (people in the VSCode terminal)
  - jumploops 1y ago
    Yes, given a similarly sparse prompt, Claude Code seems to perform "better" because it eagerly does things you don't necessarily know to ask GPT-5 may underwhelm with the same sparse prompt, as it seems to do exactly what's asked, not more You can still "fully vibe" with GPT-5, but the pattern works better in two steps: 1. Plan (iterate on high-level spec/PRD, split into actions) 2. Build (work through plans) Splitting the context here is important, as any LLM will perform worse as the context gets more polluted.
Topfi 1y ago
One major improvement I have seen today, even before I saw the announcement, was that the model is far more reliable in using the Task Completion interface to communicate what stage of the prompt is being implemented. Previously this was only shown sparingly (especially in the first few weeks) and if, it didn't properly tick tasks, simply jumping from the first to completion at the end. Now this works very reliably and I do like this improvement, but if I didn't know better, would have suspected this was merely the result of a system prompt change, considering GPT-5 adherence being very solid in my experience, this should have been fixable without a tuned model. Nevertheless, I like this improvement (arguably fix of a previously broken feature). Beyond that, purely anecdotal and subjective, but this model does seem to do extensive refactors with semi precise step-by-step guidance a bit faster (comparing GPT-5 Thinking (Medium) and GPT-5 Codex (Medium)), though adherence to prompts seems roughly equivalent between the two as of now. In any case, I really feel they should consider a more nuanced naming convention. New Claude Sonnet 3.7 was a bit of a blunder, but overall, Anthropic has their marketing in tight order compared to OpenAI. Claude Code, Sonnet, Opus, those are great, clear differentiating names. Codex meanwhile can mean anything from a service for code reviews with Github integration to a series of dedicated models going back to 2021. Also, while I do enjoy the ChatGPT app integration for quick on-the-go work made easier with a Clicks keyboard, I am getting more annoyed by the drift between Codex VSCode, Codex Website and Codex in the ChatGPT mobile app. The Website has a very helpful Ask button, which can also be used to launch subtasks via prompts written by the model, but such a button is not present in the VSCode plugin, despite subtasks being something you can launch from the VSCode plugin if you have used Ask via the website first. Meanwhile, the iOS app has no Ask button and no sub task support and neither the app, nor VSCode plugin show remote work done beyond abbreviations, whereas the web page does show everything. Then there are the differences between local and remote via VSCode and the CLI, ... To people not using Codex, this must sound insane and barely understandable, but it seems that is the outcome of spreading yourself across so many fields. CLI, dedicated models, VSCode plugin, mobile app, code review, web page, some like Anthropic only work on one or two, others like Augment three, but no one else does that much, for better and worse. I like using Codex, but it is a mess with such massive potential that needs a dedicated team lead whose only focus is to untangle this mess, before adding more features. Alternatively, maybe interview a few power user on their actual day to day experience, those that aren't just in one, but are using multiple or all parts of Codex. There is a lot of insight to be gained from someone who has an overview off the entire product stack, I think. Sending out a questionnaire to top users would be a good start, I'd definitely answer.
brador 1y ago
Take off the guardrails and let humanity thrive. It is inevitable.
ianbutler 1y ago
I just want the codex models in the API, I won’t touch them until then. And before someone says it, I do happen to have my own codex like environment complete with development containers, browser, github integration, etc. And I'm happy to pay a mint for access to the best models.
- greyb 1y ago
  They've said it's coming: >For developers using Codex CLI via API key, we plan to make GPT‑5-Codex available in the API soon.
  - ianbutler 1y ago
    I saw that, but soon doesn’t inspire confidence, and is easy to overlook if they don’t. They didn’t with the previous Codex model.
robotswantdata 1y ago
Codex CLI IDE just works, very impressed with the quality. If you tried it a while back and didn’t like it, try it again via the vscode extension generous usage included with plus. Ditched my Claude code max sub for the ChatGPT pro $200 plan. So much faster, and not hit any limits yet.
- steinvakt2 1y ago
  Im using Cursor with the $20 plan and hit rate limits after 15 days (so im paying extra the rest of the month). What do you recommend I do?
  - robotswantdata 1y ago
    You could get two plus accounts? Or maybe a business account with two seats? The $200 pro feels good value personally.
- poszlem 1y ago
  Wait, what? They now allow claude code like subscription instead of the API too?
  - robotswantdata 1y ago
    Yes for at least a month. Download the vscode extension and sign in with ChatGPT
  - Tiberium 1y ago
    Yes, just do "codex login" and it'll use your ChatGPT subscription.
    - energy123 1y ago
      Do you also get free Codex CLI usage?
- what 1y ago
  >CLI IDE What?
j45 1y ago
Has anyone hit any programming usage limits with the ChatGPT 5 Pro account?
- robotswantdata 1y ago
  None yet, feels unlimited. Huge repos too
trilogic 1y ago
[flagged]
- laidoffamazon 1y ago
  I agree because I don’t want to get fired or get audited
  - trilogic 1y ago
    Jeez -2! No sense of humor left, my comment was sent to the very end. That´s sad and says a lot. Is it because I forgot to mention Grok, that you are pissed :)) It is a joke for god sake, laugh it while you still can. What a narrative damn.
stopachka 1y ago
Very impressive. I've been working on a shared background presence animation, and have been testing out Claude and Codex. (By shared presence, I mean imagine a page's background changing based on where everyone's cursor is) Both were struggling yesterday, with Claude being a bit ahead. Their biggest problems came with being "creative" (their solutions were pretty "stock"), and they had trouble making the simulation. Tried the same problem on Codex today. The design it came up with still felt a bit lackluster, but it did _a lot_ better on the simulation.
- M4v3R 1y ago
  > Their biggest problems came with being "creative" (their solutions were pretty "stock") LLM designed UIs will always look generic/stock if you don’t give it additional prompting because of how LLMs work - they’ve memorized certain design patterns and if you don’t specify what you want they will always default to a certain look. Try adding additional UI instructions to your prompts. Tell it what color scheme you want, what design choices you prefer, etc. Or tell it to scan your existing app’s design and try to match it. Often the results will be much better this way.
simianwords 1y ago
OpenAI is starting its new era of specialized models. Guess they gave up on a monolithic model approach
- CuriouslyC 1y ago
  If you try to optimize for everything you get a model that's good at nothing (or hyper expensive to train and run). Simple economics. There is no free lunch.
simianwords 1y ago
The code review thing might be my favorite UX for AI based development. Largely stays out of your way and provides good comments. I’m imagining if it can navigate the codebase and modify tests - like add new cases or break the tests by changing a few lines. This can actually verify if the tests were doing actual assertions and being useful. Thorough reviewing like this probably benefits me the most - more than AI assisted development.
klipklop 1y ago
From my observation of the past 2 weeks is that Claude Code is getting dramatically worse and super low usage quota's while OpenAI Codex is getting great and has a very generous usage quota in comparison. For people that have not tried it in say ~1 month, give Codex CLI a try.
- SecretDreams 1y ago
  All that matters to the end users is to never be trapped. Cross-shop these products around constantly and go for lowest price, highest performance ratios. We've seen over the last year all companies trade blows, but none are offering something novel within the current space. There is no reason to "stick to one service". But the services will try very hard to keep you stuck for that SaaS revenue.
- theshrike79 1y ago
  Does it still go "your project is using git, let me just YOLO stuff" on first startup? My essentials for any coding agent are proper whitelists for allowed commands (you can run uv run <anything>, but rm requires approval every time) and customisable slash commands. I can live without hooks and subagents.
  - dns_snek 1y ago
    > proper whitelists for allowed commands (you can run uv run <anything>, but rm requires approval every time) This is a nearly impossible problem to solve. uv run rm * Sandboxing and limiting its blast radius is the only reliable solution. For more inspiration: https://gtfobins.github.io/ https://gtfobins.github.io/
king_magic 1y ago
Doesn't seem ready for prime-time. I'll be impressed when it actually installs. npm ERR! code 1 npm ERR! path /usr/local/lib/node_modules/@openai/codex/node_modules/@vscode/ripgrep npm ERR! command failed npm ERR! command sh -c node ./lib/postinstall.js npm ERR! /usr/local/lib/node_modules/@openai/codex/node_modules/@vscode/ripgrep/lib/download.js:199 npm ERR! zipFile?.close();
- drewbitt 1y ago
  codex cli has been out for 5 months with 170k weekly downloads - it's definitely 'ready for primetime' if you can get past your bug. I don't have that issue.
  - king_magic 1y ago
    The install errors out after following two basic install commands. This is poor code hygiene on the part of the authors. That's "not ready for primetime" in my book. npm ERR! code 1 npm ERR! path /usr/local/lib/node_modules/@openai/codex/node_modules/@vscode/ripgrep npm ERR! command failed npm ERR! command sh -c node ./lib/postinstall.js npm ERR! /usr/local/lib/node_modules/@openai/codex/node_modules/@vscode/ripgrep/lib/download.js:199 npm ERR! zipFile?.close(); npm ERR! ^ npm ERR! npm ERR! SyntaxError: Unexpected token '.'
    - SyrupThinker 1y ago
      Please tell me you are not running a NodeJS release that hasn't been supported for at least 3 years... Optional chaining was added in v14 (2020), and it sure looks like that is the issue here.
      - king_magic 1y ago
        Brand new, clean install of npm. Poor code + doc hygiene is the problem here.
inerte 1y ago
Oh since when Codex cli is now included as part of a ChatGPT plan? 99% sure that wasn't the case before. Time to try to use it for real.
- andyferris 1y ago
  It's relatively new - they enabled it ~1 month ago or something.
- simonw 1y ago
  They added that around June 4th, here's the PR: https://github.com/openai/codex/pull/1212 https://github.com/openai/codex/pull/1212
twalichiewicz 1y ago
It's been interesting reading this thread and seeing that others have also switched to using Codex over Claude Code. I kept running into a huge issue with Claude Code creating mock implementations and general fakery when it was overwhelmed. I spent so much time tuning my input prompt just to keep it from making things worse that I eventually switched. Granted, it's not an apples-to-apples comparison since Codex has the advantage of working in a fully scaffolded codebase where it only has to paint by numbers, but my overall experience has been significantly better since switching.
- theshrike79 1y ago
  1) create plan in plan-mode 2) ask it to implement plan That's the way to work with Claude. Other systems don't have a bespoke "planning" mode and there you need to "tune your input prompt" as they just rush in to implementation by guessing what you wanted
codybontecou 1y ago
Do they have a GitHub action to run in GitHub, similar to Claude?
- Maxious 1y ago
  Yes https://developers.openai.com/codex/cloud/code-review https://developers.openai.com/codex/cloud/code-review
  - dsiegel2275 1y ago
    It isn't quite the same. The Claude Code action can be easily integrated into a workflow to fire automatically (like when a PR is opened). The Codex support at the moment requires adding a comment "@codex review" which then initiates a cloud based review. You can, however, directly invoke Codex CLI from a GitHub workflow to do things like perform a code review.
bezzi 1y ago
is this model just super slow to anyone else?
- e1g 1y ago
  Extremely slow for me - takes minutes to get anything done. Regular GPT5 was much faster. Hoping it’s mostly due to the launch day.
  - bigwheels 1y ago
    I've been using gpt-5 on effort=high but for gpt-5-codex, try: `-c model_reasoning_effort=medium`. On high it is totally unusable.
    - replyfabric-ai 1y ago
      even on medium ... gpt-5 was way faster, at least that's my first impression
- Topfi 1y ago
  I have seen fluctuations in token/sec. Early yesterday, roughly equivalent to none Codex GPT-5 (this branding ...), late yesterday I had a severe drop off in token/sec. Today, it seems to have improved again and with the lowered amount of unnecessary/rambling token output, GPT-5-Codex (Medium) seems faster overall. LLM rollouts always have this back and forth in token/sec, especially in the first few days.
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epolanski 1y ago
Question, how do I get the equivalent of Claude's "normal mode" in Codex CLI? It is super annoying that it either vibe codes and just edits and use tools, or it has a plan mode, but no in-between where it asks me whether it's fine it does a or b. I'm not understanding why it lacks such a capability, why in the world would I want to choose between having to copy paste the edits or auto accept them by default...
- klipklop 1y ago
  Usually I give it a prompt that includes telling it to formulate a plan and not not do any coding until I approve. I will usually do several loops of that before I give it the instruction to go forward with the plan. I like to copy and paste the plan elsewhere because at times these LLM's can "forget" the plan. I usually do testing at each major milestone (either handed off to me or do builds/unit tests.)
  - epolanski 1y ago
    Yeah, no way I'm doing copy pasting or allowing it to vibe it. I want it to help me come up with a plan, execute and check and edit every single edit but with the UX offered by claude, Codex is simply atrocious, I regret spending 23 euros on this. I see the visual studio code extension does offer something like this, but the UX/UI is terrible, doesn't OAI have people testing those things? The code is unreadable in that small window[1], doesn't show the lines above/below, it doesn't have IDE tooling (can't inspect types e.g.). https://i.imgur.com/mfPpMlI.png https://i.imgur.com/mfPpMlI.png This is just not good, that's the kind of AI that slows me, doesn't help at all.
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sanex 1y ago
I've considered swapping to Claude since the last update made talking to gpt absolutely terrible. I heavily make use of being able to put in PRs on mobile by working with codex, and if it wasn't for this I'd probably have switched. Excited to see the updates.
- CuriouslyC 1y ago
  Don't. Claude is worse for everything but coding, and even then it's mostly better for coding in greenfield/small projects, and it makes a mess of large projects. The only thing really good about Claude was the plan economics, and now I'm not so sure about it.
  - theshrike79 1y ago
    It only makes a mess of large projects if your CLAUDE.md and docs/ are out of date. It has a very specific style and if your project isn't in that style, it starts to enforce it -> "making a mess".
    - CuriouslyC 1y ago
      Nah bro. I have a Claude Code hall of shame, where Sonnet gets derailed by the most trivial shit, and instead of finishing actual research code that's been clearly outlined for it (like, file by file level instructions), it creates a broken toy implementation with fake/simulated output ("XXX isn't working, the user wants me to YYY, let me just try a simpler approach...") and it'll lie about it in the final report, so if you aren't watching the log, sucks to be you. I have an extensive array of tripwires, provenance chain verifications and variance checks in my code, and I have to treat Claude as adversarial when I let it touch my research. Not a great sign.
arthurcolle 1y ago
Agent-1
bdcravens 1y ago
I literally tried out Codex for the first time this weekend, and the results were ... weird. It'll be interesting to see if it does things differently. (It was a super simple prompt, standing up a Rails app in Docker Compose with a home page and Devise; it hard-coded each file to create inside of the bootstrap.sh, instead of actually creating the files to begin with)
kelvinjps 1y ago
I bought chatgpt last month and I think that openai is doing things right now, mostly in the experience, for example it has a better voice mode than Claude's and I liked their new model names than the confusing ones they used to have, it simplified the whole thing. Also as a general assistant is better too, for comparison Claude for non code things is not that very good. And openai keep releasing tools and seems more reliable in their tools
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georgeofjungle7 1y ago
Cool upgrade, but I wonder how this plays with existing tools like Copilot and Cursor. Everyone’s moving toward “AI pair programmer in every IDE,” and it feels like the competition is less about raw model quality now and more about integration + workflow lock-in. Codex getting everywhere (terminal, GitHub, phone) sounds powerful
ryandetzel 1y ago
I don't know. Something that takes CC about a minute is now on minute 15 with this new model...
thurn 1y ago
Does the "caching containers for Codex Cloud" mean I have some chance of being able to reuse build artifacts between tasks? My Rust project takes around 20 minutes to set up from scratch in a new Codex environment, which seems extremely expensive.
preaching5271 1y ago
I've been a hardcore claude-4-sonnet + Cursor fan for a long time, but in the last 2 months my usage went through the roof. I started with the basic Cursor subscription, then upgraded to pro, until I hit usage limits again. Then I started using my own Claude API key but I was still paying ~70$ / 5 days, which is not that sustainable for me. But since grok-code-fast-1 landed, I've been using it daily with Cursor and it's fantastic, fast and cheap (free so far). I've also been using GPT-5 lately through the official Codex VSCode extension, and it blows my mind. Last night I used gpt-5-medium to help me heavily refactor a react-native app, improved it's structure and overall performance, something that would've taken me at least 2 days. Now I'm testing out gpt-5-medium-codex, asked it to restructure the entire app routing, and it seems it makes a lot of tool calls, understands, executes commands, it's very organized. Overall my stack from now on is Cursor + grok-code-fast-1 for daily use, and Codex/GPT when I need the brainz. Worth noting that I abused gpt-5-medium all day long yesterday, and I never hit any kind of limit (I just used by ChatGPT Plus account), reason for which I thank the OpenAI team
- heymijo 1y ago
  What exactly did your work flow look like for the gpt-5-medium refactor you did? I don't have a test like that on hand so I'm really curious what all you prompted the model, what it suggested, and how much your knowledge as a SWE enabled that workflow. I'd like a more concrete understanding if the mind blowing nature is attainable for any average SWE, an average Joe that tinkers, or only a top decile engineer.
- dmix 1y ago
  I also hit Cursor usage limits for the first time in a year. Hit limits on Claude, GPT, and then it started using Grok :) I chose to turn on Cursor's pay per usage within the Pro plan (so I paid $25, $20+$5 usage, instead of upgrading to $60/m) in order to keep using Claude because it's faster than Grok
- xwowsersx 1y ago
  I've landed on more or less the same. grok-code-fast-1 has been working well for most coding tasks. I use it in opencode (I guess it's free for some amount of time? Because I haven't added any grok keys ¯\_(ツ)_/¯)
kerpal 1y ago
First time I was able to install Codex with no NPM errors. Gonna give it a shot, seems a lot slower than Claude Code but I'm only using basic Pro with ChatGPT vs. Max 100.
gosasan 1y ago
I’ve been using Claude Code ($20/month) for about two weeks now, and with one of the token usage monitors I can handle most of what I need. I also have the $20/month ChatGPT plan. I know I could try Codex CLI, but I’ve been hesitant since I’ve seen people suddenly hit the limit and get locked out for a week. The problem is that there’s no way to check usage. So I’m wondering if this update improves token usage management, or if there’s now a way to actually see our usage so we don’t end up tripping the limit without any warning.
- holoduke 1y ago
  Same setup as your. Started with codex 2 days ago on a large 3d engine project. Spend at least 20 hours prompting. One time I received a message. Try again in 4 minutes. I generally let Gemini create a prompt and then paste it inside codex. For example is asked gemeni to make a plan for a subdivided lod terrain render with shadow map functionality etc. It took codex almost an hour to execute it. Did an alright job. Quite impressed.
supermatt 1y ago
I thought i would give this AI assisted coding another go, so have subscribed to ChatGPT to try out this new codex, but it just seems soooooo slooooow. I just don't see how this can be considered productive - I am waiting 20 minutes staring at it "thinking" while it does trivial tasks on a virtually bare repo. I guess for async agents its not such a big deal if they are slow as molasses, as you can run dozens of them, but you need a structured codebase for that - and i am already hours in and haven't even gotten a skeleton. I have read through all the docs, watched the video. It would be so much quicker just to write this code myself. What am I doing wrong? Is it just super slow because they are over capacity or is this just the current state of the art?
- haarts 1y ago
  What I see most engineers do is parallelize. Have multiple agents work at the same time. It takes some time getting used to, but I think they are on to something. There's even an article I read about this the other week, but I can't seem to find it ATM.
  - malyk 1y ago
    Right. The idea here is to kick of 3-8 or something tasks. They finish as you finish writing the next prompt. Then you go and review/test/merge the code from the first task, then another task finishes and you review/test/merge that code. The challenge is that you have to be working on multiple work streams at once because so far Codex isn't great at not doing work you are doing in another task even if you tell it something like "class X will have a function that returns y"...it will go write that function most times. I've found it really good for integration work between frontend and backend features where you can iterate on both simultaneously if the code isn't in the same codebase. Also, for Codex this works best in the web ui because it actually uses branches, opens prs, etc. I think (though could be wrong) that locally with the CLI or IDE extension you might have to manually great git worktrees, etc.
    - maximamas 1y ago
      Yeah I try to keep it away from overlapping it's work as much as possible. Using plan mode in claude or just telling codex to build a plan, that is structured in a parallelized way for multiple agents usually helps delegate tasks to be handled at the same time. Typically: app code, infra, and data layer are the main three, but obviously depends on the project. If I ever find my self just waiting, then it always gives me an opportunity to respond to messages, emails, or update tickets. Won't be long now until the agents are doing that as well...

GPT-5-Codex

396 points by meetpateltech 1y ago

esafak 1y ago

Do they demand biometrics to use it?

incomingpain 1y ago

Still waiting on codex cli to support lm studio.

NitpickLawyer 1y ago
? Isn't lmstudio API openai compatible? Codex cli already supports 3rd party models, you have to edit the config yaml file, and you can add many model providers.
- incomingpain 1y ago
  I never managed to get it to work. I used chatgpt to try to do it for me :)
  - NitpickLawyer 1y ago
    This is how I did it - https://github.com/openai/codex/blob/main/docs/config.md#model_providers https://github.com/openai/codex/blob/main/docs/config.md#mod... I have it go to openrouter, and then you just export the API key and run codex, works smoothly.

Tiberium 1y ago

Only an 1.7% upgrade on SWE-Bench compared to GPT-5, but 33.9 vs 51.3% on their internal code refactoring benchmark. This seems like an Opus 4.1-like upgrade, which is nice to see and means they're serious about Codex.

alvis 1y ago

It's interest to see this quote: `for the bottom 10% of user turns sorted by model-generated tokens (including hidden reasoning and final output), GPT‑5-Codex uses 93.7% fewer tokens than GPT‑5` It sounds like it can make simple tasks much more correct. It's impressive to me. Today coding agent tends to pretend they're working hard by generating lots of unnecessary code. Hope it's true

arresin 1y ago
This is my issue with gpt-5. If you use the low or medium reasoning it’s garbage. If you use high, it’ll think for up to five minutes on something dead simple.
- srcreigh 1y ago
  Can you be more specific about what type of code you're talking about, and what makes it garbage? I'm happy with medium reasoning. My projects have been in Go, Typescript, React Dockerfiles stuff like that. The code almost always works, it's usually not "Clean code" though.

jumploops 1y ago

Interesting, the new model's prompt is ~half the size (10KB vs. 23KB) of the previous prompt[0][1]. SWE-bench performance is similar to normal gpt-5, so it seems the main delta with `gpt-5-codex` is on code refactors (via internal refactor benchmark 33.9% -> 51.3%). As someone who recently used Codex CLI (`gpt-5-high`) to do a relatively large refactor (multiple internal libs to dedicated packages), I kept running into bugs introduced when the model would delete a file and then rewrite in (missing crucial or important details). My approach would have been to just the copy the file over and then make package-specific changes, so maybe better tool calling is at play here. Additionally, they claim the new model is more steerable (both with AGENTS.md and generally). In my experience, Codex CLI w/gpt-5 is already a lot more steerable than Claude Code, but any improvements are welcome! [0]https://github.com/openai/codex/blob/main/codex-rs/core/gpt_5_codex_prompt.md https://github.com/openai/codex/blob/main/codex-rs/core/gpt_... [1]https://github.com/openai/codex/blob/main/codex-rs/core/prompt.md https://github.com/openai/codex/blob/main/codex-rs/core/prom...

pants2 1y ago
Interestingly, "more steerable" can sometimes be a bad thing, as it will tend to follow your prompt to the letter even if that's against your interests. It requires better prompting and generally knowing what you're doing - might be worse for vibe-coders and better for experienced SWEs.
- htrp 1y ago
  think they're indexing here for professional work (people in the VSCode terminal)
- jumploops 1y ago
  Yes, given a similarly sparse prompt, Claude Code seems to perform "better" because it eagerly does things you don't necessarily know to ask GPT-5 may underwhelm with the same sparse prompt, as it seems to do exactly what's asked, not more You can still "fully vibe" with GPT-5, but the pattern works better in two steps: 1. Plan (iterate on high-level spec/PRD, split into actions) 2. Build (work through plans) Splitting the context here is important, as any LLM will perform worse as the context gets more polluted.

Topfi 1y ago

One major improvement I have seen today, even before I saw the announcement, was that the model is far more reliable in using the Task Completion interface to communicate what stage of the prompt is being implemented. Previously this was only shown sparingly (especially in the first few weeks) and if, it didn't properly tick tasks, simply jumping from the first to completion at the end. Now this works very reliably and I do like this improvement, but if I didn't know better, would have suspected this was merely the result of a system prompt change, considering GPT-5 adherence being very solid in my experience, this should have been fixable without a tuned model. Nevertheless, I like this improvement (arguably fix of a previously broken feature). Beyond that, purely anecdotal and subjective, but this model does seem to do extensive refactors with semi precise step-by-step guidance a bit faster (comparing GPT-5 Thinking (Medium) and GPT-5 Codex (Medium)), though adherence to prompts seems roughly equivalent between the two as of now. In any case, I really feel they should consider a more nuanced naming convention. New Claude Sonnet 3.7 was a bit of a blunder, but overall, Anthropic has their marketing in tight order compared to OpenAI. Claude Code, Sonnet, Opus, those are great, clear differentiating names. Codex meanwhile can mean anything from a service for code reviews with Github integration to a series of dedicated models going back to 2021. Also, while I do enjoy the ChatGPT app integration for quick on-the-go work made easier with a Clicks keyboard, I am getting more annoyed by the drift between Codex VSCode, Codex Website and Codex in the ChatGPT mobile app. The Website has a very helpful Ask button, which can also be used to launch subtasks via prompts written by the model, but such a button is not present in the VSCode plugin, despite subtasks being something you can launch from the VSCode plugin if you have used Ask via the website first. Meanwhile, the iOS app has no Ask button and no sub task support and neither the app, nor VSCode plugin show remote work done beyond abbreviations, whereas the web page does show everything. Then there are the differences between local and remote via VSCode and the CLI, ... To people not using Codex, this must sound insane and barely understandable, but it seems that is the outcome of spreading yourself across so many fields. CLI, dedicated models, VSCode plugin, mobile app, code review, web page, some like Anthropic only work on one or two, others like Augment three, but no one else does that much, for better and worse. I like using Codex, but it is a mess with such massive potential that needs a dedicated team lead whose only focus is to untangle this mess, before adding more features. Alternatively, maybe interview a few power user on their actual day to day experience, those that aren't just in one, but are using multiple or all parts of Codex. There is a lot of insight to be gained from someone who has an overview off the entire product stack, I think. Sending out a questionnaire to top users would be a good start, I'd definitely answer.

brador 1y ago

Take off the guardrails and let humanity thrive. It is inevitable.

ianbutler 1y ago

I just want the codex models in the API, I won’t touch them until then. And before someone says it, I do happen to have my own codex like environment complete with development containers, browser, github integration, etc. And I'm happy to pay a mint for access to the best models.

greyb 1y ago
They've said it's coming: >For developers using Codex CLI via API key, we plan to make GPT‑5-Codex available in the API soon.
- ianbutler 1y ago
  I saw that, but soon doesn’t inspire confidence, and is easy to overlook if they don’t. They didn’t with the previous Codex model.

robotswantdata 1y ago

Codex CLI IDE just works, very impressed with the quality. If you tried it a while back and didn’t like it, try it again via the vscode extension generous usage included with plus. Ditched my Claude code max sub for the ChatGPT pro $200 plan. So much faster, and not hit any limits yet.

steinvakt2 1y ago
Im using Cursor with the $20 plan and hit rate limits after 15 days (so im paying extra the rest of the month). What do you recommend I do?
- robotswantdata 1y ago
  You could get two plus accounts? Or maybe a business account with two seats? The $200 pro feels good value personally.
poszlem 1y ago
Wait, what? They now allow claude code like subscription instead of the API too?
- robotswantdata 1y ago
  Yes for at least a month. Download the vscode extension and sign in with ChatGPT
- Tiberium 1y ago
  Yes, just do "codex login" and it'll use your ChatGPT subscription.
  - energy123 1y ago
    Do you also get free Codex CLI usage?
what 1y ago
>CLI IDE What?

j45 1y ago

Has anyone hit any programming usage limits with the ChatGPT 5 Pro account?

robotswantdata 1y ago
None yet, feels unlimited. Huge repos too

trilogic 1y ago

[flagged]

laidoffamazon 1y ago
I agree because I don’t want to get fired or get audited
- trilogic 1y ago
  Jeez -2! No sense of humor left, my comment was sent to the very end. That´s sad and says a lot. Is it because I forgot to mention Grok, that you are pissed :)) It is a joke for god sake, laugh it while you still can. What a narrative damn.

stopachka 1y ago

Very impressive. I've been working on a shared background presence animation, and have been testing out Claude and Codex. (By shared presence, I mean imagine a page's background changing based on where everyone's cursor is) Both were struggling yesterday, with Claude being a bit ahead. Their biggest problems came with being "creative" (their solutions were pretty "stock"), and they had trouble making the simulation. Tried the same problem on Codex today. The design it came up with still felt a bit lackluster, but it did _a lot_ better on the simulation.

M4v3R 1y ago
> Their biggest problems came with being "creative" (their solutions were pretty "stock") LLM designed UIs will always look generic/stock if you don’t give it additional prompting because of how LLMs work - they’ve memorized certain design patterns and if you don’t specify what you want they will always default to a certain look. Try adding additional UI instructions to your prompts. Tell it what color scheme you want, what design choices you prefer, etc. Or tell it to scan your existing app’s design and try to match it. Often the results will be much better this way.

simianwords 1y ago

OpenAI is starting its new era of specialized models. Guess they gave up on a monolithic model approach

CuriouslyC 1y ago
If you try to optimize for everything you get a model that's good at nothing (or hyper expensive to train and run). Simple economics. There is no free lunch.

simianwords 1y ago

The code review thing might be my favorite UX for AI based development. Largely stays out of your way and provides good comments. I’m imagining if it can navigate the codebase and modify tests - like add new cases or break the tests by changing a few lines. This can actually verify if the tests were doing actual assertions and being useful. Thorough reviewing like this probably benefits me the most - more than AI assisted development.

klipklop 1y ago

From my observation of the past 2 weeks is that Claude Code is getting dramatically worse and super low usage quota's while OpenAI Codex is getting great and has a very generous usage quota in comparison. For people that have not tried it in say ~1 month, give Codex CLI a try.

SecretDreams 1y ago
All that matters to the end users is to never be trapped. Cross-shop these products around constantly and go for lowest price, highest performance ratios. We've seen over the last year all companies trade blows, but none are offering something novel within the current space. There is no reason to "stick to one service". But the services will try very hard to keep you stuck for that SaaS revenue.
theshrike79 1y ago
Does it still go "your project is using git, let me just YOLO stuff" on first startup? My essentials for any coding agent are proper whitelists for allowed commands (you can run uv run <anything>, but rm requires approval every time) and customisable slash commands. I can live without hooks and subagents.
- dns_snek 1y ago
  > proper whitelists for allowed commands (you can run uv run <anything>, but rm requires approval every time) This is a nearly impossible problem to solve. uv run rm * Sandboxing and limiting its blast radius is the only reliable solution. For more inspiration: https://gtfobins.github.io/ https://gtfobins.github.io/

king_magic 1y ago

Doesn't seem ready for prime-time. I'll be impressed when it actually installs. npm ERR! code 1 npm ERR! path /usr/local/lib/node_modules/@openai/codex/node_modules/@vscode/ripgrep npm ERR! command failed npm ERR! command sh -c node ./lib/postinstall.js npm ERR! /usr/local/lib/node_modules/@openai/codex/node_modules/@vscode/ripgrep/lib/download.js:199 npm ERR! zipFile?.close();

drewbitt 1y ago
codex cli has been out for 5 months with 170k weekly downloads - it's definitely 'ready for primetime' if you can get past your bug. I don't have that issue.
- king_magic 1y ago
  The install errors out after following two basic install commands. This is poor code hygiene on the part of the authors. That's "not ready for primetime" in my book. npm ERR! code 1 npm ERR! path /usr/local/lib/node_modules/@openai/codex/node_modules/@vscode/ripgrep npm ERR! command failed npm ERR! command sh -c node ./lib/postinstall.js npm ERR! /usr/local/lib/node_modules/@openai/codex/node_modules/@vscode/ripgrep/lib/download.js:199 npm ERR! zipFile?.close(); npm ERR! ^ npm ERR! npm ERR! SyntaxError: Unexpected token '.'
  - SyrupThinker 1y ago
    Please tell me you are not running a NodeJS release that hasn't been supported for at least 3 years... Optional chaining was added in v14 (2020), and it sure looks like that is the issue here.
    - king_magic 1y ago
      Brand new, clean install of npm. Poor code + doc hygiene is the problem here.

inerte 1y ago

Oh since when Codex cli is now included as part of a ChatGPT plan? 99% sure that wasn't the case before. Time to try to use it for real.

andyferris 1y ago
It's relatively new - they enabled it ~1 month ago or something.
simonw 1y ago
They added that around June 4th, here's the PR: https://github.com/openai/codex/pull/1212 https://github.com/openai/codex/pull/1212

twalichiewicz 1y ago

It's been interesting reading this thread and seeing that others have also switched to using Codex over Claude Code. I kept running into a huge issue with Claude Code creating mock implementations and general fakery when it was overwhelmed. I spent so much time tuning my input prompt just to keep it from making things worse that I eventually switched. Granted, it's not an apples-to-apples comparison since Codex has the advantage of working in a fully scaffolded codebase where it only has to paint by numbers, but my overall experience has been significantly better since switching.

theshrike79 1y ago
1) create plan in plan-mode 2) ask it to implement plan That's the way to work with Claude. Other systems don't have a bespoke "planning" mode and there you need to "tune your input prompt" as they just rush in to implementation by guessing what you wanted

codybontecou 1y ago

Do they have a GitHub action to run in GitHub, similar to Claude?

Maxious 1y ago
Yes https://developers.openai.com/codex/cloud/code-review https://developers.openai.com/codex/cloud/code-review
- dsiegel2275 1y ago
  It isn't quite the same. The Claude Code action can be easily integrated into a workflow to fire automatically (like when a PR is opened). The Codex support at the moment requires adding a comment "@codex review" which then initiates a cloud based review. You can, however, directly invoke Codex CLI from a GitHub workflow to do things like perform a code review.

bezzi 1y ago

is this model just super slow to anyone else?

e1g 1y ago
Extremely slow for me - takes minutes to get anything done. Regular GPT5 was much faster. Hoping it’s mostly due to the launch day.
- bigwheels 1y ago
  I've been using gpt-5 on effort=high but for gpt-5-codex, try: `-c model_reasoning_effort=medium`. On high it is totally unusable.
  - replyfabric-ai 1y ago
    even on medium ... gpt-5 was way faster, at least that's my first impression
Topfi 1y ago
I have seen fluctuations in token/sec. Early yesterday, roughly equivalent to none Codex GPT-5 (this branding ...), late yesterday I had a severe drop off in token/sec. Today, it seems to have improved again and with the lowered amount of unnecessary/rambling token output, GPT-5-Codex (Medium) seems faster overall. LLM rollouts always have this back and forth in token/sec, especially in the first few days.

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epolanski 1y ago

Question, how do I get the equivalent of Claude's "normal mode" in Codex CLI? It is super annoying that it either vibe codes and just edits and use tools, or it has a plan mode, but no in-between where it asks me whether it's fine it does a or b. I'm not understanding why it lacks such a capability, why in the world would I want to choose between having to copy paste the edits or auto accept them by default...

klipklop 1y ago
Usually I give it a prompt that includes telling it to formulate a plan and not not do any coding until I approve. I will usually do several loops of that before I give it the instruction to go forward with the plan. I like to copy and paste the plan elsewhere because at times these LLM's can "forget" the plan. I usually do testing at each major milestone (either handed off to me or do builds/unit tests.)
- epolanski 1y ago
  Yeah, no way I'm doing copy pasting or allowing it to vibe it. I want it to help me come up with a plan, execute and check and edit every single edit but with the UX offered by claude, Codex is simply atrocious, I regret spending 23 euros on this. I see the visual studio code extension does offer something like this, but the UX/UI is terrible, doesn't OAI have people testing those things? The code is unreadable in that small window[1], doesn't show the lines above/below, it doesn't have IDE tooling (can't inspect types e.g.). https://i.imgur.com/mfPpMlI.png https://i.imgur.com/mfPpMlI.png This is just not good, that's the kind of AI that slows me, doesn't help at all.

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sanex 1y ago

I've considered swapping to Claude since the last update made talking to gpt absolutely terrible. I heavily make use of being able to put in PRs on mobile by working with codex, and if it wasn't for this I'd probably have switched. Excited to see the updates.

CuriouslyC 1y ago
Don't. Claude is worse for everything but coding, and even then it's mostly better for coding in greenfield/small projects, and it makes a mess of large projects. The only thing really good about Claude was the plan economics, and now I'm not so sure about it.
- theshrike79 1y ago
  It only makes a mess of large projects if your CLAUDE.md and docs/ are out of date. It has a very specific style and if your project isn't in that style, it starts to enforce it -> "making a mess".
  - CuriouslyC 1y ago
    Nah bro. I have a Claude Code hall of shame, where Sonnet gets derailed by the most trivial shit, and instead of finishing actual research code that's been clearly outlined for it (like, file by file level instructions), it creates a broken toy implementation with fake/simulated output ("XXX isn't working, the user wants me to YYY, let me just try a simpler approach...") and it'll lie about it in the final report, so if you aren't watching the log, sucks to be you. I have an extensive array of tripwires, provenance chain verifications and variance checks in my code, and I have to treat Claude as adversarial when I let it touch my research. Not a great sign.

arthurcolle 1y ago

Agent-1

bdcravens 1y ago

I literally tried out Codex for the first time this weekend, and the results were ... weird. It'll be interesting to see if it does things differently. (It was a super simple prompt, standing up a Rails app in Docker Compose with a home page and Devise; it hard-coded each file to create inside of the bootstrap.sh, instead of actually creating the files to begin with)

kelvinjps 1y ago

I bought chatgpt last month and I think that openai is doing things right now, mostly in the experience, for example it has a better voice mode than Claude's and I liked their new model names than the confusing ones they used to have, it simplified the whole thing. Also as a general assistant is better too, for comparison Claude for non code things is not that very good. And openai keep releasing tools and seems more reliable in their tools

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georgeofjungle7 1y ago

Cool upgrade, but I wonder how this plays with existing tools like Copilot and Cursor. Everyone’s moving toward “AI pair programmer in every IDE,” and it feels like the competition is less about raw model quality now and more about integration + workflow lock-in. Codex getting everywhere (terminal, GitHub, phone) sounds powerful

ryandetzel 1y ago

I don't know. Something that takes CC about a minute is now on minute 15 with this new model...

thurn 1y ago

Does the "caching containers for Codex Cloud" mean I have some chance of being able to reuse build artifacts between tasks? My Rust project takes around 20 minutes to set up from scratch in a new Codex environment, which seems extremely expensive.

preaching5271 1y ago

I've been a hardcore claude-4-sonnet + Cursor fan for a long time, but in the last 2 months my usage went through the roof. I started with the basic Cursor subscription, then upgraded to pro, until I hit usage limits again. Then I started using my own Claude API key but I was still paying ~70$ / 5 days, which is not that sustainable for me. But since grok-code-fast-1 landed, I've been using it daily with Cursor and it's fantastic, fast and cheap (free so far). I've also been using GPT-5 lately through the official Codex VSCode extension, and it blows my mind. Last night I used gpt-5-medium to help me heavily refactor a react-native app, improved it's structure and overall performance, something that would've taken me at least 2 days. Now I'm testing out gpt-5-medium-codex, asked it to restructure the entire app routing, and it seems it makes a lot of tool calls, understands, executes commands, it's very organized. Overall my stack from now on is Cursor + grok-code-fast-1 for daily use, and Codex/GPT when I need the brainz. Worth noting that I abused gpt-5-medium all day long yesterday, and I never hit any kind of limit (I just used by ChatGPT Plus account), reason for which I thank the OpenAI team

heymijo 1y ago
What exactly did your work flow look like for the gpt-5-medium refactor you did? I don't have a test like that on hand so I'm really curious what all you prompted the model, what it suggested, and how much your knowledge as a SWE enabled that workflow. I'd like a more concrete understanding if the mind blowing nature is attainable for any average SWE, an average Joe that tinkers, or only a top decile engineer.
dmix 1y ago
I also hit Cursor usage limits for the first time in a year. Hit limits on Claude, GPT, and then it started using Grok :) I chose to turn on Cursor's pay per usage within the Pro plan (so I paid $25, $20+$5 usage, instead of upgrading to $60/m) in order to keep using Claude because it's faster than Grok
xwowsersx 1y ago
I've landed on more or less the same. grok-code-fast-1 has been working well for most coding tasks. I use it in opencode (I guess it's free for some amount of time? Because I haven't added any grok keys ¯\_(ツ)_/¯)

kerpal 1y ago

First time I was able to install Codex with no NPM errors. Gonna give it a shot, seems a lot slower than Claude Code but I'm only using basic Pro with ChatGPT vs. Max 100.

gosasan 1y ago

I’ve been using Claude Code ($20/month) for about two weeks now, and with one of the token usage monitors I can handle most of what I need. I also have the $20/month ChatGPT plan. I know I could try Codex CLI, but I’ve been hesitant since I’ve seen people suddenly hit the limit and get locked out for a week. The problem is that there’s no way to check usage. So I’m wondering if this update improves token usage management, or if there’s now a way to actually see our usage so we don’t end up tripping the limit without any warning.

holoduke 1y ago
Same setup as your. Started with codex 2 days ago on a large 3d engine project. Spend at least 20 hours prompting. One time I received a message. Try again in 4 minutes. I generally let Gemini create a prompt and then paste it inside codex. For example is asked gemeni to make a plan for a subdivided lod terrain render with shadow map functionality etc. It took codex almost an hour to execute it. Did an alright job. Quite impressed.

supermatt 1y ago

I thought i would give this AI assisted coding another go, so have subscribed to ChatGPT to try out this new codex, but it just seems soooooo slooooow. I just don't see how this can be considered productive - I am waiting 20 minutes staring at it "thinking" while it does trivial tasks on a virtually bare repo. I guess for async agents its not such a big deal if they are slow as molasses, as you can run dozens of them, but you need a structured codebase for that - and i am already hours in and haven't even gotten a skeleton. I have read through all the docs, watched the video. It would be so much quicker just to write this code myself. What am I doing wrong? Is it just super slow because they are over capacity or is this just the current state of the art?

haarts 1y ago
What I see most engineers do is parallelize. Have multiple agents work at the same time. It takes some time getting used to, but I think they are on to something. There's even an article I read about this the other week, but I can't seem to find it ATM.
- malyk 1y ago
  Right. The idea here is to kick of 3-8 or something tasks. They finish as you finish writing the next prompt. Then you go and review/test/merge the code from the first task, then another task finishes and you review/test/merge that code. The challenge is that you have to be working on multiple work streams at once because so far Codex isn't great at not doing work you are doing in another task even if you tell it something like "class X will have a function that returns y"...it will go write that function most times. I've found it really good for integration work between frontend and backend features where you can iterate on both simultaneously if the code isn't in the same codebase. Also, for Codex this works best in the web ui because it actually uses branches, opens prs, etc. I think (though could be wrong) that locally with the CLI or IDE extension you might have to manually great git worktrees, etc.
  - maximamas 1y ago
    Yeah I try to keep it away from overlapping it's work as much as possible. Using plan mode in claude or just telling codex to build a plan, that is structured in a parallelized way for multiple agents usually helps delegate tasks to be handled at the same time. Typically: app code, infra, and data layer are the main three, but obviously depends on the project. If I ever find my self just waiting, then it always gives me an opportunity to respond to messages, emails, or update tickets. Won't be long now until the agents are doing that as well...