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ChatGPT Work Tool and Skill Reference
- simonw 26d agoSee this comment for background (and creation prompt): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49504625#49505116 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49504625#49505116
- owebmaster 26d ago[flagged]
- simonw 26d agoMy comment here is entirely justified in this case. Someone else submitted my vibe-coded slop site to the front page without any context, and it accumulated enough votes to show up at the top. I could have linked to my blog post about it, but instead I linked to a Hacker News comment precisely because I anticipated complaints about "spamming" if I linked to my blog.
- bingemaker 26d ago[flagged]
- rvz 26d ago[flagged]
- simonw 26d agoWhat am I "doing" here?
- rvz 26d ago[flagged]
- simonw 26d agoHow is this comment "spam"? Spell it out for me. (I think you may be confusing "spam" with "prolific". I write a lot.)
- rvz 26d agoOnce again, continues to gaslight after spamming a post with another top-posted comment after having to “justify” it. In this case, You already admitted to it. There is just no end or need to rapidly post on every opportunity that involves “AI” or whatever that is related to it.
- simonw 26d agoSeriously, what's your definition of spam? Or an easier question: how am I gaslighting here? You should be able to spell that out. (You do understand that the top linked site here was built by me, but has no authorship information on it at all, right? That's why I posted a comment explaining what it is.)
- simianwords 26d ago.. I know its tempting to try to reply to all these people but I'd just ignore them. A lot of them feel stressed by AI and it has nothing to do with you personally.
- owebmaster 26d ago"Am I so out of touch?" "No, it's the children who are wrong".
- nswizzle31 26d agoSpam = excessive promotion of your work. It’s not one comment, but the entire context of all your comments. Gaslighting because it’s so OBVIOUS that this is what people are referring to by “spam” that you almost have to be purposely pretending to not understand. Such a prolific writer simply has to be aware of the fine line where promoting your work becomes excessive. Not taking sides here.
- monster_truck 26d agomaybe chill out dog
- infecto 26d agoI just tune out every post that says “I wrote about this already” and then links to it. Simon is great and kudos for his self promotion but it’s interesting to see as it’s often called out for anyone else. The guy is good but he certainly stretches the limit. I just auto ignore his stuff but I know others enjoy!
- yoavm 26d agoSimon, thank you for your comments and the great content you create. I've learned a lot from your blogposts and your experiments.
- NoDodgeQuestion 26d agoYou don't know, SimonW made Django Python framework?
- rob 26d agoDidn't he leave the project before it even had an official release?
- rob 26d agohttps://simonwillison.net/2005/Jul/17/django/ https://simonwillison.net/2005/Jul/17/django/ > I haven’t been involved with Django since leaving the Journal-World back in September, but now that the framework is open-sourced I look forward to contributing to its further development—both in terms of documentation and actual code.
- Cheyana 26d agoChuckling at a Python reference in a comment thread arguing about spam.
- bewareofscams 26d agoHaving done a thing does not make a person into a demigod embodiment for life, please remember that guys.
- deleted 26d ago[deleted]
- roseway4 26d agoSimon is not the OP. He’s just commenting on his own work. How is that spam?
- bewareofscams 26d ago[flagged]
- dang 26d agosimonw is a fine contributor to HN and we're lucky to have him. I realize that for some people there is too much LLM-related content and (therefore?) too much by certain authors, but that has always been the case for certain topics and certain authors in HN's history. This is a side effect of the frontpage being the same for everyone, and therefore the scarcest resource. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20front%20scarce&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
- cebert 26d agoSimon, thanks for all the great work you do. I definitely appreciate your contributions to discussion threads here as well as your blog. I learned so much from you.
- enos_feedler 26d agoFor ultimate show of appreciation, there is a way to subscribe to his work on github :)
- enraged_camel 26d agoMeta comment: I've been wondering why AI-generated websites/artifacts/reports always have the same "look". It reminds me of Bootstrap (CSS Framework) days when every startup website looked the same. Are they following some sort of common guideline?
- simonw 26d agoIn this case they really are, and you can read the guidelines that helped create the site on the site itself in the skills: https://codex-tool-reference.simonw.chatgpt.site/skills/sites-sites-building https://codex-tool-reference.simonw.chatgpt.site/skills/site... Scroll down to the "Establish the visual direction" section.
- tsunamifury 26d agoThis can be replaced, you just have to do the work of building a design library yourself and the guidance components. Then building skills around their use.
- newswasboring 26d agoI think these guideline are built into the llms. After all with llms, any decision you don't take will be taken for you. For a so called slop site (Simon's words, not mine :P) I don't think they specified a style so the llm just decided the default it knows. One day I will run experiments (when I can afford it) trying to identify the "taste" of different llms.
- simonw 26d agoI told it "Design aesthetic should be technical docs, minimal flare" - full prompt here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49504625#49505116 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49504625#49505116
- verdverm 26d agonit, the LHS menu does not scroll until I get the the very bottom of the main content, it should scroll independently so I can see the "ToC" in full without having to view the page in full
- simonw 26d agoI think the most interesting skill here is the control-browser one: https://codex-tool-reference.simonw.chatgpt.site/skills/control-browser https://codex-tool-reference.simonw.chatgpt.site/skills/cont... It tells ChatGPT Work how to launch a Playwright instance via its Node.js REPL, and tells it to run: nodeRepl.write(await browser.documentation()); To get further instructions. That method returns this text with full details about how to use the browser: https://codex-tool-reference.simonw.chatgpt.site/skills/control-browser#browser-documentation https://codex-tool-reference.simonw.chatgpt.site/skills/cont... I'd love to know why it's defined like that, as opposed to including all of the instructions directly in the skill Markdown file.
- newswasboring 26d agoI'm guessing, but can be because then the skill will always fetch the latest docs.
- ChrisGreenHeur 26d ago[flagged]
- lanyard-textile 26d agoIt's runtime dependent on the browser being used! A skill file wouldn't be able to have this dynamically injected for the browser that's about to be used. Skill file could indicate general instructions for all browsers. This provides guidance for the browser that's about to actually be used.
- jw1224 26d agoI've used a similar technique with my own tools. It helps to save context overall, by deferring the detailed instructions not only to when they're needed, but also to where they're needed. Simply loading the browser Skill alone, doesn't always mean a browser is actually necessary (or supported). The user might've want them to control their main desktop browser; or the user might be pointing them toward a read-only HTML file that doesn't need rendering; or the sandbox might prevent network access; etc... Codex is especially 'keen' to use Skills (especially by comparison to Claude), I often see it load Skills which it doesn't go on to use, because the main Skill content says "when not to use this". So I'm sure this is a product design decision to help with those kinds of circumstances.
- felixgallo 26d agoAnyone using ChatGPT Work given Sam Altman's richly documented history(1), the essential elimination and/or public exit of the safety function at OpenAI(2), and the huggingface debacle's exposure of the abject operational, cultural and technical failures at OpenAI(3), is making a serious mistake. (1) https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2026/04/13/sam-altman-may-control-our-future-can-he-be-trusted https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2026/04/13/sam-altman-may... (2) https://thenextweb.com/news/openai-preparedness-team-disbanded-ipo-streamlining https://thenextweb.com/news/openai-preparedness-team-disband... (3) https://thezvi.wordpress.com/2026/08/29/metr-and-redwood-offer-holy-postmortem-of-the-huggingface-hack/ https://thezvi.wordpress.com/2026/08/29/metr-and-redwood-off...
- nickthegreek 26d agoWhich provider currently lives up to your moral code?
- LtWorf 25d agoNone
- felixgallo 25d agoWhich provider or providers live up to yours?
- nickthegreek 25d agoSo no answer. Got it. You are the one who is pontificating here.
- felixgallo 25d agoI've got an answer, I just wonder if you have one too. For me, it's Anthropic (at least they try) > Chinese models (industrial espionage and attempted dumping but at least it's from Anthropic, who, as previous, tries) > Not Using LLMs At All And Living In A Cave > OpenAI (Sam Altman, Oracle, Peter Thiel) > SpaceX (Nazi Salutes, CSAM, open fascism and racism). Now you! This is fun.
- ChrisArchitect 26d ago[dupe] Discussion on associated blog post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49504625 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49504625
- hnmu4c5zar 26d ago[dead]
- satvikpendem 26d agoI don't get how this is different from Codex if Codex can do all the same things.
- simonw 26d agoChatGPT Work in the ChatGPT desktop app is effectively Codex with a different skin. It can operate on your local files in the same way. ChatGPT Work in the ChatGPT web and mobile app experience is very different. If you like, you can think of it as a cloud-hosted version of Codex that's skinned to look more like consumer ChatGPT.
- satvikpendem 26d agoIf I use Codex in one session on desktop can I then resume it for cloud and mobile sessions as Work? Or do I have to make separate sessions each time? Or rather, can Codex in the cloud do the same things, if such a thing exists?
- lxgr 25d ago> ChatGPT Work in the ChatGPT desktop app is effectively Codex with a different skin. It can operate on your local files in the same way. It even shares the same login state and conversation history with /resume, at least when running it in a "project" (which seems to largely map to a directory/repo, at least the one selected as "primary"?)
- shostack 25d agoAs someone who uses ChatGPT and Codex across desktop and phone and VPS, the current topology they have for their different "apps" is very confusing and disjointed. I would really like to see improvements in unifying this and reducing the confusion between what works in which part on which device and enabling seamless context and memory sharing across them.
- hnhvkm0w0p 26d ago[dead]
- montroser 26d agoCan we get one for how to test websites on a regular sized screen? That left-hand sidebar needs to be able to scroll on its own, unless you're on a 4k monitor. Otherwise, there's no way to view the bottom half of the list.
- sundancegh 25d ago[dead]
- darepublic 25d agoSome of these work tools can slow things down and waste plentiful tokens