00:00:00it's probably not super shocking to you when I tell you that everything's moving super fast with
00:00:06AI. And I don't even mean the model releases where we get new models almost every week and we got a
00:00:12new best model every week of course. I'm specifically referring to developer tools here or these agentic
00:00:20engineering tools. It's only been a couple of weeks ago in January that I recorded and released a video
00:00:26where I shared my views on Cloud Code, Open Code, Cursor and GitHub Copilot. Now back then I only
00:00:35used Codex for I don't know a few weeks and only here and there but I have been heavily influenced
00:00:44by Peter Steinberger who we of course all know from OpenClaw which is an amazing story but it's
00:00:49a different story because back in January already I saw posts from him time to time where he mentioned
00:00:56that Codex is really amazing and my understanding wasn't is that he's referring to both the model and
00:01:04probably also the AI coding agent so an alternative to Cloud Code and that is when I started playing
00:01:13around with it too but Cloud Code was still my main driver back then and in 2025 I've mostly used
00:01:20GitHub Copilot and Cursor and Open Code so yeah I'm really switching a lot because of course I
00:01:26yeah I really like playing around with these different tools and seeing what they can do,
00:01:30which features to offer. I mean I'm the kind of guy who liked having those different JavaScript
00:01:35frameworks back in 2019 so I guess I just like learning new stuff but that's why I also enjoy
00:01:41diving into these tools. Codex by OpenAI is a really great agentic engineering tool I have to
00:01:50say and to be very clear right away I wouldn't say it's better than Cloud Code or Cursor and
00:01:57that changes all the time anyways but it's great and there are a couple of reasons why I think
00:02:02that Codex is a great tool and might be worth a closer look. One reason is the Codex AI models so
00:02:08yeah the models have the same names as the tool. Here I'm talking about GPT 5.2 Codex and GPT 5.3
00:02:16Codex by the way fun fact GPT 5.3 was released in early February and I became like a heavy Codex
00:02:24user in late January so most of my time has been with this model and GPT 5.2 was only in December
00:02:32so yeah those model releases are really getting close to each other and the obvious reason is that
00:02:38of course OpenAI wants to compete with Anthropic and the Cloud models Opus so yeah there is that.
00:02:45But I will say the Codex models really are great and to me it feels like 5.3 Codex often takes a
00:02:52bit longer but tackles certain tasks more thoroughly than Opus but then again really I'm not in the camp
00:03:01of telling you that one model is so much better than the other or that there are such huge
00:03:07differences between these tools but what I do like about Codex the tool now not the model is of course
00:03:15that it's powered by the models but also that it has different form factors different ways you can
00:03:20use it for example it has that in my opinion really amazing desktop app at the point of time where I'm
00:03:27recording this that only exists for Mac OS but I think a Windows version is planned. By the way I
00:03:33did create a new course about Codex and I used Codex combined with Cloud Code to build this
00:03:41MaxDraw app which I'm using in all these videos which I've been using for the last weeks and
00:03:45months already so that is built by me with those AI tools and I got a lot out of that that is why I
00:03:52basically condensed all my learnings all my experiences and how to use skills how to work
00:03:57with work trees how to offload tasks to the cloud I put that all into a course and if you're interested
00:04:03if you want to learn that you find a link to it below this video of course. So this app this native
00:04:09desktop app is really amazing in my opinion and I would say it gives us an idea of how
00:04:16agentic engineering could look like in the future because in this app you don't primarily look at
00:04:23your code there there are no files here instead here you have your sessions and you can basically
00:04:30send your prompts to Codex and have it work on your tasks and then you can always review changes
00:04:39in here. So here I have a conversation in a different project where I have changes quite a
00:04:45lot of changes here actually and you can then open this mode here where you can dive into the
00:04:51different files and see what changed compared to your last commit and my workflow has definitely
00:04:58changed such that I don't write a lot of code myself anymore I still do here and there but I
00:05:04mostly architect the software and I steer the AI and I try to do that very carefully and intentionally
00:05:11and have small tasks but I then mostly spend my time reviewing or not mostly but a lot of my time
00:05:19is reviewing the code because what I don't do I don't vibe away and just accept it blindly instead
00:05:25I read the plans it makes I change the plans it makes and I do review the code and I really
00:05:32like the look and feel of this this app and how easy it is to work with the agent switch between
00:05:38sessions and also yeah review the code and then there's a bunch of other useful stuff in there
00:05:43into which I also get in my course of course like working with work trees or cloud projects and
00:05:49really great app I have to say I really like it a lot now of course if you don't like that app or if
00:05:55you're on windows and you can't use it yet I will say codex is first and foremost of course also a
00:06:01cli tool a terminal user interface like clod code and it's a great one I will say it has just the
00:06:10right set of features I feel like and what was really great doesn't sound like a big thing maybe
00:06:18but it's written in rust which doesn't matter too much to me I'm not in the rust fanboy camp rust is
00:06:24a great language in my opinion though but it's really good performance wise where clod code can
00:06:31feel a bit sluggish and slow from time to time this codex cli for me worked pretty much flawlessly
00:06:40and again just to be clear clod code cursor all amazing but I will say it's it's a great cli and
00:06:46combined with that native app and the great model I had a great time working with it now what I find
00:06:53interesting is if we take a look at how these ai models developed and evolved I mean how these
00:07:04coding agents developed and evolved over time not the models the agents it's really interesting
00:07:10github copilot started in 2021 and back then it was just as autocompletion powered by a model
00:07:18named codex which has basically nothing to do with today's codex then in 2023 we had cursor which was
00:07:25the big thing and and still is a big thing but to me it feels like now in 2026 clod code and codex
00:07:36are right now at least the more popular or hyped tools now hype is a dangerous thing especially in
00:07:44the ai space and we have seen how quickly things change I mean codex has absolutely been not hyped
00:07:52at all like a month ago I would say so that has only recently changed and it can't change again
00:07:57though again it's a great tool so there is some reason for the hype but right now to me it feels
00:08:03like cursor is almost well not dead but it was the main agentic engineering tool like three months ago
00:08:14and now it feels like it's declining and nobody's interested in it anymore which I'm sure is wrong
00:08:21that's just the x bubble I live in which is probably not the best indicator but still it's interesting
00:08:30how quickly this changes github copilot for example to me now feels more like it's maybe coming back
00:08:37because it was the first then cursor totally ate its breakfast or whatever you say and then github
00:08:45copilot had a really hard time coming back and now to me it feels like they are doing a better job
00:08:51here I mean with the latest version of visual studio code the whole agent interface was improved
00:08:58and modernized and by the way you can also use cloud code and codex from indir if you have the
00:09:04respective subscriptions and tools installed so it feels like maybe this is having a comeback
00:09:10and cursor to me feels a bit like it's going down and who knows in three weeks or months everything
00:09:16might be totally different again which I guess takes me back to an earlier point I'm the kind of guy who
00:09:23didn't worry too much about all the javascript framework wars back in 2019 and no not just
00:09:30because I create courses I have not created courses on all the frameworks we had back then
00:09:34I just genuinely like learning stuff and seeing where I can get the most use out of obviously if
00:09:41you're in a job and you have a certain framework to work with or a certain tool to work with
00:09:46that doesn't bother you at all but for me I like having all this innovation and I'm super excited
00:09:52to see how these ai coding tools will evolve what will be new and trending in a couple of
00:09:59months and obviously I'll try my best to keep my respective courses updated I got courses on all
00:10:04these tools now because I've worked with all of them a lot so I'll of course try to stay up to date
00:10:10there but yeah I will say it's it's a really interesting time to live in it's so fast moving
00:10:16and I totally get that this can also be intimidating but at the same time I feel like it's it's also
00:10:22really exciting to some degree but yeah I know not everybody shares that opinion for sure