At the start of May, OpenAI released a playful feature inside its Codex desktop app for creating a virtual pet.
This silly little addition solved my biggest challenge with Codex: what should I do with it? My first real task with Codex was putting together a virtual Lil Finder Guy for fun.
A month later, I’m using two Mac apps that Codex built at my direction. Toying around with Codex Pets was the gateway for me to better understand its capabilities.
Both Mac apps are just for my use and not intended for distribution, but that’s just a choice and not a Codex limitation. They’re genuinely usable and useful software applications that serve my needs.
One tool is called Flow, and it just helps me track activity and changes around the App Store. Another offers a better experience with using a social network on the Mac without certain constraints of Chrome, like minimum window width.
The experience taught me just how much these tools have changed since this time last year as well.
For example, I wanted to make my own Launchpad replacement when macOS Tahoe removed the feature from the Mac last June. (Launchpad wasn’t for everyone, but it was part of my muscle memory since OS X Lion. I’ve since moved on from missing it.)
Using ChatGPT to walk me through Xcode while copying and pasting blocks of code and screenshots of errors was a process void of much joy. Even as a proof-of-concept, I couldn’t get the app that I was making to resemble the behavior that I had in mind. Nuking the project felt good.
With Codex, I had a functioning app that solved my specific need in almost no time (and literally no Xcode). I was able to go from idea to minimum viable software almost immediately. The rest of my first month with Codex and making the app was spent adding features beyond my original need and getting more specific about how things should look and behave.
There are more tools that I want to make for myself next, and having Codex’s capabilities on the Mac has been a real boost.
(Next, I’ll be watching Apple’s WWDC announcements with a new eye for what additional capabilities become available. I’m also cautious about any changes that may break my newfound system for turning ideas into functioning tools.)
Computer Use in Codex is a major unlock
Part of what makes Codex good at this compared to my experience using ChatGPT a year ago is that the model and app are made for coding and generally just doing things for you.
ChatGPT will absorb most or all of this functionality as a feature within the main app, but the extent of this remains to be seen. For now, there’s one thing in particular about Codex that made all the difference in the world: Computer Use.
Codex is far from the only coding agent available on the Mac, and it’s not the only version with a computer use feature either. But Codex’s Computer Use feature is phenomenal. On the Mac, it works in the background without taking over your machine. For me, this has meant I’ve been able to use my Mac, uninterrupted, while this coding agent expertly follows my direction.
Codex’s Computer Use essentially unlocks the complete opposite experience from what ChatGPT provided in this department last summer. Instead of it providing me with guidance and not much perspective, I’ve been able to guide it and vastly expand my own perspective.
You don’t have to spend a lot to get Codex experience
And all of this happened with the $20/month ChatGPT Plus plan. While I haven’t been able to prioritize spending more on experimenting with higher limits, the constraint has been positive for realizing what the very entry-level Codex experience can provide.
Bringing Codex capabilities to ChatGPT everywhere sounds like the right move for exposing how OpenAI’s technology has advanced in just the last few months.
For me, it was playing around with Codex Pets that served as the AI training wheels. Including Codex tools inside ChatGPT can be the training wheels for a lot more of the user base.
OpenAI’s Codex desktop Mac app is available for both Apple silicon and Intel machines.
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