Transcript
00:00:00"You need to be tool agnostic or you're gonna get screwed."
00:00:03A perfect illustration of this just occurred a few days ago
00:00:06when Anthropic came out and said,
00:00:08"They're gonna change how they bill
00:00:10"programmatic cloud code usage."
00:00:12And if you're all in on a single vendor,
00:00:14changes like this can have significant negative effects
00:00:19to your wallet.
00:00:20So in order to prevent you from becoming a prisoner
00:00:23to a single tool, we need to learn how to diversify.
00:00:27And that's exactly what we're gonna do today.
00:00:29As I show you how to introduce codecs into your stack.
00:00:33And the best part about using codecs isn't even the fact
00:00:35that GPT 5.5 is really strong
00:00:37or that the desktop app is extremely intuitive.
00:00:40It's the fact that Claude code and codecs,
00:00:42the Venn diagram of these two tools is essentially a circle.
00:00:46Once you've mastered one of them,
00:00:47you've pretty much mastered the other.
00:00:49So if you're an experienced Claude code user,
00:00:51you're in a great position to start leveraging codecs.
00:00:54And in this video, I'm gonna give you a speed run
00:00:56of what you need to know
00:00:57so you can do it as efficiently as possible.
00:01:00So we've got two versions of codecs to think about.
00:01:02We have the codecs desktop app and we have the codec CLI.
00:01:06If you're someone who wants to use the codec CLI
00:01:08purely through the terminal, it's extremely easy to set up.
00:01:10We're just running a few lines of code.
00:01:12And then from there, I'm not really joking.
00:01:14You just treat it like you would Claude code.
00:01:16That whole Venn diagram being a circle totally applies here.
00:01:19Now there are some subtle differences.
00:01:22It's not completely the same,
00:01:23but in this video, we are going to be taking a look
00:01:25at those differences through the lens
00:01:27of the codecs desktop application.
00:01:30Now, why the desktop application?
00:01:32Because I like it.
00:01:33Super intuitive, it's nice to use,
00:01:34and it's easy to sort of explain all the differences
00:01:37through that lens.
00:01:38Also, I say that as someone who uses Claude code
00:01:41purely through the terminal.
00:01:43I like using codecs on the desktop app.
00:01:45I kind of just like mixing it up.
00:01:46And as you'll see, you can also use the terminal
00:01:49inside of the codecs application,
00:01:51which is a great way to use both Claude code and codecs.
00:01:53So understand everything we talk about,
00:01:55even though it's on the desktop app also applies to the CLI.
00:01:58Now, before we install and get it running,
00:02:00let's talk about codecs pricing very quick.
00:02:01'Cause this is a place where it wins versus Claude code.
00:02:05The open AI sort of philosophy on usage
00:02:08is much less draconian than anthropics.
00:02:11So you're going to want to be on the plus or pro.
00:02:15The difference is the $20 a month plan
00:02:17versus the $100 a month plan.
00:02:18And they also have a 20X pro plan similar to Claude max.
00:02:23The big difference is if I'm on the pro plan at $100
00:02:26versus the plus plan at 20, I get access to GPT 5.5 pro.
00:02:31So there's GPT 5.5 and there's GPT 5.5 pro.
00:02:355.5 pro is better, obviously.
00:02:38The base level 5.5 is still really good.
00:02:42So if you're someone who's already paying $200 a month
00:02:44to anthropic and you're like,
00:02:46I kind of just want to try codecs.
00:02:47I don't want to go nuts with it off the bat.
00:02:49Just do plus, just do the 20 bucks a month on 5.5.
00:02:52Your usage is still really good
00:02:53because the usage at $20 a month on open AI
00:02:57is better than $20 a month in anthropic.
00:02:59There's not like a great way to do like a one-for-one test,
00:03:02but 5.5 also just uses less tokens in general.
00:03:05So that's my take on it.
00:03:07You're going to get more usage, more bang for your buck.
00:03:09So to get it started,
00:03:10you're just going to go to openai.com/codex,
00:03:12download and install it.
00:03:14When you open up the codecs desktop app,
00:03:15it's going to look something like this.
00:03:17Very similar to chat GPT and also pretty similar
00:03:20to the cloud code desktop app.
00:03:22We have our prompt window.
00:03:23We have the ability to add photos and files,
00:03:26plugins, plan mode.
00:03:27We have sort of our permissions set up
00:03:29similar to how we set permissions inside of cloud code.
00:03:32I can set my model, the speed and the intelligence,
00:03:36and we're pretty much ready to go.
00:03:37From here I can also select where I want my project to live,
00:03:41what I'm working on.
00:03:42Now, before we demo it in action,
00:03:43let's take a look at some of the settings.
00:03:44So if I come down to the bottom left and I head to settings,
00:03:47so the first tab is general.
00:03:48You're going to want to be on coding
00:03:49to get more technical responses.
00:03:51And then it's going to ask you about permission.
00:03:53So this is similar to sort of the permissions with cloud code,
00:03:56what it can edit and what it can edit
00:03:57without actually asking you.
00:03:59For me, I enable all of these
00:04:01because I run on full access the entire time.
00:04:04Beyond that, it's sort of just asking you stuff
00:04:06about your environments
00:04:07and what sort of speed and all that you want.
00:04:09So for speed, understand if you go to fast,
00:04:12it's charging you 1.5 times the tokens.
00:04:15Another interesting thing is follow up behavior,
00:04:17queue versus steer.
00:04:18So you're going to want to leave it in queue for default.
00:04:21That's saying, hey, if Codex is in the middle
00:04:23of some sort of tool call, it's doing something
00:04:25and I give it another prompt.
00:04:27If it's in queue mode,
00:04:28it's going to wait to finish everything
00:04:29before it hits my next prompt.
00:04:31If it's on steer mode,
00:04:33then whenever I give it a follow on prompt
00:04:36while it's doing something,
00:04:38after it finishes its tool call in the middle of it,
00:04:41so maybe it's doing 20 tool calls.
00:04:43At tool call five, I add another prompt.
00:04:44It's then going to inject that prompt.
00:04:47So sometimes you want that
00:04:48and as you'll see, we can manually press steer
00:04:52whenever we give a follow on prompt,
00:04:53but that probably isn't how you want it to default.
00:04:55At least I don't.
00:04:56So that's what that is.
00:04:57Next up, we got appearance.
00:04:59So you can kind of adjust this how you want.
00:05:00You also have pets.
00:05:01Now I kind of like pets.
00:05:03Like I made my own like cool little custom pet.
00:05:04The way this works is if I'm working inside of Codex
00:05:07and I give it a prompt,
00:05:09this acts as like a little hook
00:05:12and it shows me what it's working on.
00:05:14It gives me a little like visual indicator
00:05:15that it's still working on something.
00:05:17So I can tab out, go do different things
00:05:19and this like little pet guy
00:05:20lets me know when it's done as well.
00:05:21So you'll see that in action.
00:05:23Some people don't care for it.
00:05:24I think it's kind of cool.
00:05:25Then we have configuration.
00:05:26So user config is similar to sort of the permissions
00:05:28we talked about earlier.
00:05:30When does it need approval to do things?
00:05:32This is you sort of setting the global values for that.
00:05:35You're also going to want to enable Codex dependencies
00:05:38and we have the user config.
00:05:40So if I open config.toml,
00:05:42what we're looking at here
00:05:42is just an internal Codex settings file
00:05:44that says some of the like plugins and things
00:05:47you have installed.
00:05:48One thing you probably will want to add to this
00:05:50is the goals feature.
00:05:52So at the very bottom,
00:05:52if you add a line and you manually put in feature
00:05:54and then goals equals true,
00:05:56that will enable the goals feature inside of Codex.
00:05:59I have a whole video on that.
00:06:00I'll link that above,
00:06:01but it's a nice way to use Codex
00:06:03as a long running agent to harness.
00:06:04Next, we have personalization.
00:06:05This isn't an agents.md.
00:06:07This isn't a claud.md thing.
00:06:09This is sort of just giving it a quote unquote personality.
00:06:11How do you want it to actually talk to you?
00:06:12And then you have memories as well.
00:06:14Memory inside of Codex,
00:06:15same way as memory inside of claud code.
00:06:17If I say, hey, every Tuesday I go to the gym,
00:06:21just gonna be like, oh yeah, let's write that down.
00:06:22So it's kind of just like, you know.
00:06:24I'm not a huge fan of these like goofy memory things,
00:06:27but if you want it, you can add it.
00:06:28Beyond that, the rest of this has to do
00:06:30with just like hooks and git and environment.
00:06:32It's relatively self-explanatory.
00:06:34Certain things like computer use,
00:06:37and you might have another thing called,
00:06:40I believe it's called like archiving or something
00:06:42to that effect, are Mac only.
00:06:44So there's certain things that you can only do
00:06:46when you are using the Mac OS.
00:06:48Now let's talk about actually using this thing.
00:06:50You kind of have two options.
00:06:51You can either be in a chat or you can be in a project.
00:06:53If I'm in a chat,
00:06:55it's kind of like I'm inside the claud desktop app
00:06:59and I'm just on like the claud chat bot section.
00:07:01Like this isn't really saving anything into a project.
00:07:03So I can say something like, hey,
00:07:05what's the difference between claud code and Codex?
00:07:11You know, it's gonna do its thing,
00:07:13but it isn't working inside a specific directory
00:07:16that I've set.
00:07:17So if you want to do that,
00:07:19let's say you're actually working on a real coding project.
00:07:21You're gonna wanna be in projects.
00:07:24So if I click on project,
00:07:25I can start from scratch or use an existing folder.
00:07:27I almost always do use an existing folder.
00:07:29So I have a little more, you know, granular control
00:07:32of where I'm putting this folder,
00:07:35but let's do a new folder and we'll call it CC to Codex.
00:07:43Select that folder and I now have a project over here.
00:07:46And you also see this as saying,
00:07:48hey, do you want to migrate some settings?
00:07:52So if I hit continue,
00:07:53what it's doing is it's importing all my settings
00:07:55from claud code into Codex.
00:07:57All my skills, all my plugins, all that stuff
00:07:59is now just like that inside of Codex, it's that easy.
00:08:02And so now if I'm here,
00:08:04what I can do is I'm now working inside my claud code
00:08:07to Codex project and this is what you wanna do
00:08:09if you're really doing anything of substance.
00:08:11Do you wanna be working in a project?
00:08:13So I can set the folder, I can set where I'm working,
00:08:16whether that's locally or in a new work tree
00:08:18or inside of Codex web,
00:08:20and then I can actually select the branch.
00:08:22So let's continue on this.
00:08:23Let's say, hey, can you create me an Excel document
00:08:28that lists out the top five differences
00:08:32between claud code and Codex?
00:08:34So we wanted to create this Excel document.
00:08:36Well, I wanted to also use the Excel plugin.
00:08:38So if I do the at symbol, you can see up here,
00:08:41I have a number of plugins and they're spreadsheets.
00:08:44So if I do that, it's going to get to work.
00:08:47Now, what are plugins?
00:08:48What are spreadsheets?
00:08:49What are all these things?
00:08:50So plugins are just like plugins inside of claud code.
00:08:53So if I come up here to the top left,
00:08:54I have a series of plugins
00:08:56and what's the difference between plugins and skills?
00:08:58Kind of a blurry line.
00:08:59Plugins tend to just be like kind of official skills
00:09:04that have a little more to them.
00:09:05So you can see some of the ones I've already enabled
00:09:08up here, things like spreadsheets
00:09:10and presentations and Chrome,
00:09:12but you can add a number of things.
00:09:13So I've added Vercel, I've added Supabase.
00:09:17And if you want to add any of these things,
00:09:18literally all you do is just hit the plus button
00:09:20and installs it.
00:09:21Usually you have to log in to that system.
00:09:23It's very, very simple.
00:09:24Up here, we also have skills.
00:09:25So here we are inside of skills.
00:09:27If I click on one of the skills that are installed,
00:09:29like the plugin creator,
00:09:30it brings up exactly what's going on inside there.
00:09:33I can enable it, disable it, try it, uninstall it, all that.
00:09:37I come up to the right, I can easily create a skill
00:09:40or plugin, so it brings up the skill creator skill.
00:09:43And so it's pretty intuitive to sort of control
00:09:45all these things in a visual format.
00:09:47Now, taking a look at our project,
00:09:50you can see our chat over here
00:09:51that we were working on earlier.
00:09:53I can pin it, I can rename it, delete it, all that,
00:09:56or I can click back into it.
00:09:58So I'm back inside our Cloud Code to Codex chat,
00:10:02and we can see it working right here.
00:10:03And while this is working, let's talk about automations.
00:10:06Automations, just like with skills, relatively easy to set up.
00:10:10It has a bunch of templates you can work with,
00:10:13but I can also just hit new automation up top.
00:10:15I can describe whatever automation I want to do,
00:10:20give it a title, auto one, put the work tree, the project,
00:10:25and when I want it to run.
00:10:26I can also set what model I want to use,
00:10:28as well as the reasoning.
00:10:30That easy.
00:10:31And like you kind of saw me do earlier,
00:10:33if I ever want to use a particular skill or plugin,
00:10:35Codex is smart enough to know when I say,
00:10:38"Hey, can you create me an Excel document
00:10:40to use the spreadsheets plugin?"
00:10:42I just explicitly called it.
00:10:44So if I want to explicitly call a skill or a plugin,
00:10:47I just use the at sign.
00:10:48So you can see all the plugins.
00:10:51I can also do forward slash stuff.
00:10:52So if I do like forward slash front end design,
00:10:57you know, you can see the front end design skill there.
00:10:59So again, very, very similar
00:11:01to how you would use Cloud Code in the terminal.
00:11:03So it finished up its Excel write-up,
00:11:05and I can actually view the Excel thing
00:11:07inside of Codex itself.
00:11:09And then if I actually want to see it inside the folder,
00:11:11I can just click right here, go to open in folder,
00:11:13and here's the actual Excel file opened up in Excel itself.
00:11:18So again, really intuitive.
00:11:20Then we can do something like,
00:11:21let's create a landing page for a website
00:11:24that talks about exactly what's in this Excel file.
00:11:28Go ahead and use the front end design tool
00:11:31to help you create that.
00:11:32So now it's going to use this Excel file
00:11:34as sort of its inspiration to create a landing page
00:11:36that talks about the differences
00:11:38between Cloud Code and Codex.
00:11:39And I will show you how we can also have it populate
00:11:42inside this sort of like sidebar,
00:11:44and we can leave comments and things like that.
00:11:46That again, makes it very easy to do things
00:11:49like front end design from the Codex desktop app.
00:11:52And one other thing like you see here,
00:11:54you can very quickly see what sort of changes it makes
00:11:57with the code.
00:11:58You can undo it, you can review it.
00:12:00So if you review it,
00:12:00it actually brings it up here in the side panel.
00:12:02So again, so easy to use.
00:12:04Now, remember how I also talked about steer versus queue.
00:12:07So if I give it a prompt while it's working saying,
00:12:09can we make this in a Neo Brutalist style?
00:12:12You see right now it's queued.
00:12:13So it's going to wait till it's done.
00:12:14If I hit steer right here,
00:12:16it now essentially injects that
00:12:19into the current working tool calls that Codex is using.
00:12:22So, you know, it's doing something.
00:12:24I pretty much tapped it on the shoulder and said,
00:12:25hey, by the way, before you finish, make sure you do this.
00:12:29So it's a nice little thing to have.
00:12:31Also, while we're here, other things to talk about context.
00:12:34So you can see right here, if I mouse over this window,
00:12:36you have the context window.
00:12:38It's only 258K tokens on 5.5 Pro versus 1 million on Opus.
00:12:44I would argue that's not actually a downside
00:12:47when we think about things like context rot.
00:12:49And because it's so small at 258, when it auto compacts,
00:12:53it's less likely to have sort of that auto compacting drift.
00:12:57Now you still can get that
00:12:58if we just let it auto compact again and again
00:13:00and again and again, it kind of starts to struggle, right?
00:13:05Like any system does.
00:13:07So, you know, if you're someone like me,
00:13:09who's very aggressive with their slash clears,
00:13:11there is no way to slash clear here.
00:13:13All you would do is you would just start a new chat
00:13:17inside the same project, right?
00:13:19That's the equivalent of doing a forward slash clear.
00:13:21And again, very easy because all the new chats
00:13:23will show up here inside of the project section.
00:13:25So overall, in terms of context management,
00:13:27I would argue it's actually easier than Clawcode.
00:13:30So here's a look at what it built for us.
00:13:31So I can go ahead and expand this panel as well.
00:13:34Looks like it took the Excel document,
00:13:38almost used that as like a background visual
00:13:39for the website itself.
00:13:41It's sort of this Neo Brutalist style
00:13:43and then goes through the top five differences
00:13:46between the two.
00:13:46So we can see Clawcode versus Codex, on and on and on.
00:13:50Now let's say there were certain things
00:13:52I wanted to change about this.
00:13:54So what I can do is I can like highlight something
00:13:58and then I can leave a comment,
00:13:59say something like can we change the font color to all black?
00:14:07And you can see over here, it's now an annotation.
00:14:09And I can continue to do that over and over and over again.
00:14:11So once you do one comment up here,
00:14:14this gets changed to annotating
00:14:15and I can go ahead and select any sort of component
00:14:20of this webpage and continue to leave more and more comments.
00:14:24Again, compare this to working purely inside the terminal,
00:14:27whether that's with the Codex CLI or with Clawcode,
00:14:29a little harder to do this kind of stuff.
00:14:31You can, but it requires other IDEs
00:14:34or additional skills and plugins.
00:14:36This is all out of the box.
00:14:37And another cool out of the box feature with Codex
00:14:39is because it's part of the OpenAI ecosystem,
00:14:41it has stuff like GPT images too.
00:14:45So it can create images for you.
00:14:47We don't have to hook up anything
00:14:48like a Higgsfield CLI like that.
00:14:49So if I give it a prompt like,
00:14:51hey, I want you to create images that kind of go along
00:14:54with all the top five differences
00:14:55and have that be like a backdrop,
00:14:57we could do that.
00:14:57So it's pretty flexible.
00:15:00But for the most part, everything we've covered,
00:15:02even though that was relatively quick,
00:15:03like that's kind of like 99% of it guys.
00:15:06Like everything else is just like, you know,
00:15:08AI coding, AI coding in general.
00:15:12But if you're someone coming from Clawcode moving to Codex,
00:15:14you just watched this video,
00:15:15you pretty much got like 95% of it.
00:15:17I'm sure I missed one or two little things,
00:15:19but like you see, like it's not a hard transition.
00:15:22And the one other thing I didn't really mention was like,
00:15:25hey, we can also add the terminal here.
00:15:26So over here on the top right, I can toggle the terminal
00:15:29and you know, I can also have Clawcode open in here as well.
00:15:34So like I talked about, you know, big picture,
00:15:37we don't want to be just pigeonholed into one tool.
00:15:39Like I don't want to just use Codex,
00:15:40just like I don't want to use Clawcode.
00:15:41It's really easy to use these two things in tandem
00:15:44with a setup like this,
00:15:45where I have like all the benefits of the Codex desktop
00:15:48with all the benefits of the Clawcode CLI.
00:15:51So highly suggest you guys try this out.
00:15:54Just do it on the $20 a month plan.
00:15:55Don't use, you need to use the hundred.
00:15:57Just give it a whirl.
00:15:58If you like it, you like it.
00:15:59If don't, hey, no harm, no foul.
00:16:00Like you saw, it's not some crazy lift
00:16:01where it's like you're learning a whole new coding language.
00:16:04Like you're not.
00:16:05It's pretty much the same thing.
00:16:06So this is where I'm going to leave you guys.
00:16:10Let me know what you thought about in the comments.
00:16:12I also have a link to Chase AI+ in the pin comment.
00:16:15That includes not only a Clawcode masterclass,
00:16:17but a Codex masterclass as well.
00:16:19So if you really want to dive deep into this material,
00:16:22I have stuff for that.
00:16:23So definitely check it out.
00:16:25Other than that, I'll see you around.
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