Codex is now in the ChatGPT mobile app

https://openai.com/index/work-with-codex-from-anywhere/

by mikeevans • 2 months ago

486 247 2 months ago

Alifatisk• 2 months ago

Whats crazier is that Codex is free. I thought I had to pay to even try it out but nope, you can use the desktop app or cli for free, its apparently included in the free plan. You just have to sign in to your ChatGPT account.

Of course I am aware that the caveat here is that all my interaction is part of training, but I’m fine with that. Even Qwen Cli discontinued the free plan.

Rover222• 2 months ago

I think it's free for about 2 useful requests and then you have to upgrade or wait?

osiris970• 2 months ago

So basically a 20$ Claude plan lmao

melagonster• 2 months ago

Switching to GPT 5.4-mini can increase the number of requests we can use freely.

thorum• 2 months ago

I was really unimpressed by the free Codex (for nodejs/react dev). I think it must be using a less powerful model or they’re limiting it in some other way.

jwilliams2• 2 months ago

Are you specifically pointing at a different experience between free + paid? Or just that the free version is unimpressive?

I'm using paid on TypeScript and it's genuinely terrific. Subjectively I think it has the edge over Opus.

I'd be surprised if OpenAI is hamstringing the free version. That would seem crazy from a GTM PoV. If anything the labs seem to throttle the heavy paid users.

wahnfrieden5• 2 months ago

Post your chat session

throw03172019• 2 months ago

The free version of ChatGPT is definitely worse as well. My SO uses the free version and I can tell a significant downgrade.

firesteelrain2• 2 months ago

How much better is it than Claude? I have both but Claude sucks up so many tokens.

bobbylarrybobby• 2 months ago

5.5 is absolutely comparable to opus 4.7 (both on highest effort), maybe even better. It generally seems less lazy, faster, and writes code closer to what I'd write. The only downside is that for very very long tasks, it can kind of lose track of the goal. For tasks under ten minutes I'll go with codex every time.

yieldcrv• 2 months ago

Less gibliterrating and more doing

Very fast

stldev2• 2 months ago

I switched some time after Anthropic bricked their models with adaptive thinking. It's a legit mystery to me how people are still using CC professionally.

Codex is far less frustrating and manages context better. It's also costing me about 1/3rd as much as Opus 4.7 on CC.

riddlemethat• 2 months ago

I stopped trying to use Claude to do anything with 4.7 because it sucks up so many tokens so quickly. I use the 4.6 model still and have switched to Codex for larger tasks. It also works better at more complex coding tasks than Claude for web apps that have python backends and typescript front ends.

noisy_boy• 2 months ago

Compaction is basically seamless which is a major weak point of Claude. At effort=low, Claude is better than codex but still slower. If you don't mind trading the upfront quality of work with additional micromanaging but at a faster speed, it is fine. I also think because of that very reason, you absorb more of the code.

pmdr• 2 months ago

I found it actually thinks about architecture and tests and not just spit out code with TODO in it like Claude.

superfrank• 2 months ago

I've been on the codex train for a few months now for personal stuff, but have Claude at work. I always tell people it's as good if not better than CC, but it has different strengths and weaknesses.

Claude was more autonomous and still is a little, but I think GPT 5.5 closed that gap a lot. Claude is far better at front end design. I think it's still better at big picture planning.

Codex is far better at code review and catching bugs that actually matter. I think it's better at following directions, although I think that regressed a bit with 5.5 (flip side of the autonomy I mentioned earlier). A lot of CC users claim to not like Codex's personality (or lack of), but personally I prefer it.

pkulak• 2 months ago

I just like that Openai let's you use your codex subscription with whatever harness you like. I prefer Pi, so that's what I use. GPT 5.5 xhigh feels equivalent to Opus to me, so there's no reason for me to be locked into the Claude Code cli. I use it off-and-on throughout my workday and never even come close to the pro limits.

orionsbelt• 2 months ago

First hit is free… got to get you hooked.

beering3• 2 months ago

Can’t you just turn off training on your data in the settings?

atorodius• 2 months ago

WDYM it is free? You hit rate limits after anout 10 messages

(side note I like that they rate limit messages and not tokens. at least it does not just stop mid reply)

tekacs4• 2 months ago

It's refreshing that unlike Anthropic's Remote Control, this actually... works.

Feels like a testament to the value in taking time and doing it properly.

Now if only codex got its 1M token context window back.

---

Edit: Hmmm. Maybe I spoke too soon. Sigh. Definitely _more_ reliable by far overall, but still have queued messages with responses on my phone that don't show up on my computer, and responses that don't show up on my phone.

Edit 2: New threads created from my phone seem to have a little stall-out, but ones that are underway are behaving reasonably well.

20kleagues• 2 months ago

Out of curiosity, what issues did you face with remote control on claude? I use it daily and it seems to work pretty well (bar the issues when my Mac would sleep and then the session would disconnect, but that's an issue on my end).

RayVR• 2 months ago

My own experience has been that it works for about five minutes before it just disconnects or hangs. I’ve never been able to use it successfully.

tekacs4• 2 months ago

Myriad, to be honest. I find it to just constantly be in a 'torn' state, the UI is very mushy on mobile with a lot of the affordances from desktop missing, and... it's distinctly less useful when you can't... edit, rewind, start a new thread, etc.

hamza_q_• 2 months ago

Made a menu bar app you may find useful for MacBook sleep prevention, even when the lid is closed:

https://github.com/narcotic-sh/modafinil

schnitzelstoat• 2 months ago

This is really useful for when you just need to approve plans or make small decisions.

stavros• 2 months ago

The best way I've found to work with LLMs is another OpenAI project, Symphony (which I implemented for Linear/GitHub and OpenCode[0]).

It integrates with your issue tracker and makes the tracker the UI for the LLM. It also clones the repo for every ticket, and can set up fixtures/etc. I can work on multiple items at a time, which is fantastic because otherwise you have to wait for the LLMs a lot.

[0] https://github.com/skorokithakis/symphony

vohk2• 2 months ago

Dang, I thought this was going to be integration for Codex Cloud, not the (still not available for Linux) Codex App. Not even Codex CLI, alas. You can still access the Cloud option from a mobile browser well enough but I prefer an app UI for poking at the things on the go.

tekacs4• 2 months ago

You can do this from the CLI - `codex remote-control` works on Linux (I have no affiliation, just something I noticed).

They might just not have cut a new build yet, today. It 'works' on master, but the mobile app thinks that your build is outdated (v0.0.0) if you build from master without overriding version, so probably easiest to wait until they cut a build if they haven't.

asadm2• 2 months ago

thanks. i dont use the app and so this is cool

vohk2• 2 months ago

Oh, that's promising, thanks! I've just been using the npm version.

embedding-shape• 2 months ago

You can do this from the CLI - `codex remote-control` works on Linux (I have no affiliation, just something I noticed).

Woah, hadn't seen this before!

Off-topic, how long compile times do people have for codex-rs in openai/codex? Even my very beefy computer takes like 30 minutes to compile in release mode, makes me wonder why it's so slow and how this TUI got so large. But then I remember, agents like to write a lot of code, compilers get slower when they have to compile a lot of code :)

beering3• 2 months ago

Codex Cloud has been in the chatgpt app for quite some time now. If you click out of the new dialogs then you can access your cloud threads

atomashevic2• 2 months ago

Linux option for Codex App https://github.com/ilysenko/codex-desktop-linux

Mobile remote connection works, pushed the PR earlier today.

asadm2• 2 months ago

I use Termius on my phone to remote and make agent do stuff while i chill or am on road. This seems useful too.

sambaumann• 2 months ago

I also do this, but I find the terminal ergonomics are a little awkward on mobile. I do think termius is the best version of it I've used though

mv4• 2 months ago

Can someone recommend an IDE that can be used with a self-hosted model (via OpenAI or similar)?

aiscoming2• 2 months ago

vs code supports local models (bring your own key/model)

you need a model server - ollama/llama.cpp/lm studio

no-name-here• 2 months ago

bring your own key

Do you mean supporting oai-compatible api URLs in copilot? If so then you need either VS Code Insiders, or a VS Code extension I believe?

suyash• 2 months ago

Look up OpenCode

Squab• 2 months ago

friends, you don’t have to always be productive. leave the agent on the computer and take care of yourself.

jorl17• 2 months ago

For many people, that's exactly why this is useful: less time on the computer, more time doing other things and occasionally checking in.

In those scenarios, the goal is not "work at any time" but to "be anywhere at any time", or, rather, to "be able to work from anywhere, doing anything".

Sort of....I guess.

yhgyy• 2 months ago

I love how all these software engineers are willingly walking into a productivity trap where they will be exploited.

I’m not a swe but damn, I’d hate to be one.

iridione• 2 months ago

This is neat! Now I'm curious, what's left to innovate in the coding agent space? Sure there are the usual suspects like maintenance, security, reliability and other scalability improvements and looks like they will be addressed in the next year or two.

thornewolf• 2 months ago

there is something "wrong" with the ux that is hard to pin down. these things generate even text summaries more rapidly than i can read them. i need a better method for dumping info into my brain + dynamic control (if necessary)

ssl-34• 2 months ago

When I take time to read all of the output, I often find that it's mostly noise. I don't like noise so I usually don't bother.

But a person can use subagents, if they want, to filter that down. This burns tokens in a big hurry, but I think subagents can be arbitrary local commands (eg, a local LLM).

Or, you know: Just slow down. :) It doesn't always have to be a race, does it?

jpalomaki• 2 months ago

Tell it to create html summaries with diagrams and sidebar for navigation.

Or ask Codex to create image that explains xyz.

ukuina• 2 months ago

Is texting your Coding Agent really the final form? Something that watches your interactions or process execution to surface improvements, or whips up prototypes while you brainstorm seems like the next step.

satvikpendem9• 2 months ago

Not sure why this was flagged, this makes sense but only if inference gets sufficiently cheap. It would be awesome to see a bunch of interactive prototypes and iterate on the UX before ever building the full app. Historically that's been somewhat difficult even with UX designers.

deadbabe• 2 months ago

Agent farms. Have agents make tons of random high fidelity variations around the clock of the same app or feature from some vague ideas, and you use each of them to see which one you like best and can productize, and you skip the need to do iterative prompts.

helsinki• 2 months ago

Some of us pay by the token.

michelb• 2 months ago

The entire UI/UX? We went back in time and basically have a text streamer in a 70's style terminal or existing editor-like situation. If you want to read and (hand)write code, sure, you might be done and be happy with the new variant of what you had decades ago.

A UI like Jira/Trello to stage features and see (agentic)team status. A Figma-like UX to actually build out the app/interface/features. A system that aids human review. There's tons of paradigms to explore and improve upon.

jumploops3• 2 months ago

I’ve been using Codex from my phone for the past couple of months (through a tunnel, not this app).

I was initially quite excited, but I’ve found the results are less than great compared to being at a keyboard.

Something about the smaller screen size and/or lack of keyboard causes me to direct the agent less, which in turn creates more tech debt/code churn/etc.

Maybe I’m just showing my age, and I should practice voice dictation or something more, but my thoughts flow faster and more clearly on a keyboard (less ums).

fowlie• 2 months ago

I've been trying voxtype (using whisper models) lately, and to my surprise all my ums are filtered out. It's really good now actually!

esperent• 2 months ago

I don't see any way to use that on a phone.

aiscoming2• 2 months ago

the ums are exactly the sign that you speak much faster than you type, so you need a pause for your thoughts to catch up

keyle• 2 months ago

I'm not sure I follow, you develop code on a remote machine by speaking to your phone and are unimpressed by the result?

selcuka• 2 months ago

They are unimpressed by their (current) ability to use it, not the technology.

jumploops3• 2 months ago

It's not that I'm unimpressed by the results, it's that I think I'm saving time by pushing the agent along remotely, but the reality is that my messages to the agent(s) end up being a lot shorter, which inevitably leaves more up for interpretation.

Don't get me wrong, I still use Codex (and sometimes Claude Code) remotely every day, and am overall excited for this release, it's just that the benefit wasn't as high as I had initially hoped.

Part of this is due to the models getting better (no need to prod along with "continue"), and part of this is the nature of how I use my phone (short bursts of attention).

But again, maybe I'm just old and prefer big screens with a keyboard.

cm2012• 2 months ago

Wispr flow cuts out ums. I love it

redanddead• 2 months ago

the main thing is functionality, you can always work around the ergonomics

fHr• 2 months ago

rust and opensource W

reassess_blind2• 2 months ago

Is there a native way to work remotely with Claude/Codex on a local folder or git repo on your main machine without having to connect it to GitHub? For creating apps for personal use I’d rather just keep the files local.

Edit: Running into issues setting it up on Windows. There's no "/remote-control" command in the CLI, so I installed the Windows Codex app. Then I updated the iOS app which now has the "Codex" feature in the sidebar, which should allow remote access to the Windows machine's instance - except it doesn't connect. The iOS app shows my desktop's hostname, so it knows there's an instance there, but refuses to connect. Issues like this would persuade a lot of folks to switch back to Claude.

iamjs• 2 months ago

I think the `/remote-control` feature does this, if I understand you correctly.

DonsDiscountGas• 2 months ago

It's supposed to. I've always found it buggy and unreliable but maybe that's just me. (This command exists in Claude btw not sure about Codex)

maille• 2 months ago

Does it work on windows? And how do you then remote in?

barrkel• 2 months ago

This is what /remote-control does in Claude Code, once it's running on your main machine. You can open it up in the phone app.

vardalab• 2 months ago

It flakes out in less than 24 hrs. I tried leaving a session open on remote control mode in a VM but it inevitably stopped with some token auth error.

Salgat• 2 months ago

I wish codex supported this, I use it all the time for claude.

wahnfrieden5• 2 months ago

That’s this announcement.

reassess_blind2• 2 months ago

I ask because I tried the other week to use /remote-control in Claude, and it prompted to connect a Github repo with no local alternative. Things may have changed since then.

My experience today with the new Codex remote control has been that it doesn't connect at all.

wolfoftheweb• 2 months ago

You can run Codex and Claude on mobile from https://github.com/happier-dev/happier

nsonha• 2 months ago

I tried apps that do this workflow (happy coder being one), but the workflow itself is rather clunky. You have to first start the session inside the remote machine. I now only do ssh, I can start or resume on whatever device suits at the time. The only downside is latency and connection drops, mosh solves it.

impulser_• 2 months ago

Say what you want about OpenAI, but their software is actually pretty dam good especially compared to Anthropic and Google. Anthropic is just sloppy, and Google just doesn't live on this planet.

Both of the Codex apps are very good.

I tried this out and it works significantly better than Claude's remote control in fact the first few times I tried Claude's remote control it didn't even work and to this day is very buggy.

haint_• 2 months ago

I use remote-control every day and haven't had many issues with it, aside from the fact that the mobile app being pretty limited, e.g there are no prompt suggestions like slash commands and skills, everything in the textbox is just a raw string. You also can’t start a new session directly from the app (have to SSH into the host manually to do that)

Other than those limitations, the connection has been very stable for me, definitely more reliable than alternatives like happy.engineering or Omnara. What’s been buggy for you specifically?

cyanydeez• 2 months ago

opencode behind a nginx proxy with a standard user/password is sufficiently powerful. You can also upgrade to https://docs.linuxserver.io/images/docker-code-server/ and run any vscode plugins; opencode's plugin is pretty rudimentry but cline has been making a lot of strides.

You can run your local LLM and just connect the docker containers. I'm paranoid of being disconnected from the LLM, so I never run any of this on the same machine, so orchestrating a docker-compose file that provides the necessary services is important.

I'm still trying to find a good remote file system to loop into the setup for improved switching between cli and these web containers.

Razengan4• 2 months ago

Codex has been great in the last 3-4 months I've been using it, almost exclusively to review existing GDScript code, and this was the feature I wanted most, because with gamedev you get the best ideas when you're out and about or in bed :)

Claude on the other hand has been jank all around from the UX to the UI to the AI itself that it's baffling how it's more popular here on HN: https://i.imgur.com/jYawPDY.png

Sadly this remote control feature doesn't seem to be for Mac to Mac yet? I love the MacBook Neo as a "thin client" for AI and keep the MacBook Pro at home/hotel, and it would be nice to share Codex desktop sessions (without SSH → resume link)

Razengan4• 2 months ago

Sadly this remote control feature doesn't seem to be for Mac to Mac yet?

Oh there is a "Control other devices" option in Settings → Connections, but it wasn't working in the build at the time of the original post

ahmadyan• 2 months ago

i'm not sure if i'm hallucinating, but i swear i had codex in the chatGPT app from long time ago (like the original codex on the web).

they added some new stuff, like remote control to wherever the desktop codex app is running, but these companies need to work much more on their press releases.

wahnfrieden5• 2 months ago

That was cloud codex. Not comparable

miohtama• 2 months ago

I have been using Omnara now some months, on desktop and mobile. It's web/mobile remote for Claude and Codex.

I can do some tasks on mobile, especially if they are follow up and steering only, greatly increasing productivity as you can keep working whilst in transit, etc.

sbinnee• 2 months ago

I don't like this direction. For accessibility aspect, sure it is good. But Codex is a coding product. I am increasingly concerned of lack of reviewing practice. I doubt that a mobile app is good for reviewing code changes.

Stay connected to active work from anywhere

... (and anytime because it's on your phone). No thanks.

jsemrau• 2 months ago

I don't understand OpenAI's product strategy.

hello8402• 2 months ago

I don't understand OpenAI's product strategy.

Neither does OpenAI.

GolfPopper• 2 months ago

It seems pretty simple:

1) Keep getting investors to give them money.

2) Convince the right people that OpenAI is "critical to national security" so that when 1 runs out, they can get bailed out by the government.

Everything else is just set dressing.

sumedh4• 2 months ago

What part is confusing?

joshka3• 2 months ago

People ask for a thing they want, someone there has codex build it. Repeat.

fa3ax• 2 months ago

They needed to announce something after the Anthropic slop rewrite of Bun.

In an ideal world the would allocate 50% of compute to find errors in that rewrite and publish how bad Claude is, but that would undermine confidence in slop in general so that is not going to happen.

Loranubi• 2 months ago

macOS only so far. "Windows is coming soon"

breatheoften2• 2 months ago

This is super nice!!!!!!

breatheoften2• 2 months ago

This is extremely what Ive been wanting -- I had previously thought about using one of the hackish apps that try to deliver this experience - or spinning up something for this myself ... - but integrating this directly is definitely the right way to provide the best system and product experience -- and this seems to work out of the box exactly as I would want!

boodleboodle2• 2 months ago

Could Codex CLI get this support also? I am sure a lot of us are running remote linux machines with Nvidia GPUs, with codex CLI running

beering3• 2 months ago

I think this is a thing, maybe need to upgrade your codex cli.

boodleboodle2• 2 months ago

Seems we must have a macOS Codex App running to enable linux box - phone communication

joquarky• 2 months ago

I got it to connect by starting codex CLI with

`codex remote-control`

but it seems to be limited/sandboxed to a specific directory.

In my case, I run all coding agents under a specific user, `agent`, and when I access it over remote from my phone, I seem to be limited to the working directory `/var/lib/agent/Documents/Code` with no obvious way to change this.

It won't let me go to my existing project directories (including the directory where I started `codex remote-control`).

I haven't tried symbolic links or anything complicated yet, as this is mostly just a novelty to me.

throwatdem123113• 2 months ago

Stay connected to active work from anywhere

And here I thought AI was gonna automate the world and we were gonna work less.

Turns out you’re gonna work 24/7 no matter where you are!

teaspoon• 2 months ago

Why not work the same amount and be at your desk less?

throwatdem123113• 2 months ago

The same reason I don’t have social media apps on my phone.

sheept• 2 months ago

your boss will probably prefer the colleague that can now work more, and isn't occasionally absent from their desk

mifydev• 2 months ago

This is a very myopic and unnecessary cynical sentiment. It's not about you - agents just need to run without your computer being on all the time. Coding is a background task that needs to run unattended now.

throwatdem123113• 2 months ago

This is absolutely not true. I run dozens of Opus agents all day and they need so much constant attention and babysitting (lest everything turn to sh*t) that I would not qualify it anywhere close to “background”. And I’m sure as hell not wrangling these things from my *phone*.

Jimidesuu• 2 months ago

So Codex is also heading towards 'portability' and I can see that here but I bet this will take time before it's cleanly optimized for mobile hard use

m3kw9• 2 months ago

Buggy af though

charlie90• 2 months ago

Nice. Next step is giving codex/Claude Code local device control...problem is the current ios/android are so locked down that agents can't do much ...but the space is so ripe for disruption that I bet we'll see AI-native devices coming out within the next few years that allow agents to interact with everything. I would be nervous if I were apple right now.

adithyassekhar• 2 months ago

Android can allow an app to control the device using accessibility permissions.

shepherdjerred• 2 months ago

I’d finally have a use case for my overpowered iPad if it could compile and run code

satvikpendem9• 2 months ago

Now how would Apple get that sweet Mac money if you could do everything from your iPad? And that's exactly why they artificially segment those devices.

pickleRick2432• 2 months ago

(Someone deleted a comment about why you'd want a mobile Codex app. This is the answer I wrote.)

Once you've used these coding agents a lot, you develop a pretty intuitive feel for how they work, what they're capable of, what they're good at, and where their weaknesses are. Hopefully, you're already pretty familiar with the code base you're working on. Combining the two, this means you can get quite far essentially "vibe coding" (i.e. not looking at the actual code) on a new branch.

So if you have some idea or some issue you want to fix on the go, you just iterate with the agent for a bit (presumably no more than a couple hours) until the agent outputs an implementation. Here, I do claim there is some "skill" (which is a function of your codebase familiarity, general SWE ability, and facility with AI agents), and if you're good, this implementation will be halfway decent a high percentage of the time. Then when you're back at your desktop, you can review the changes carefully/do some proper testing/debugging etc. But you've saved a good chunk of time- an initial draft is already waiting for you.

nextaccountic• 2 months ago

But what if the code is on my laptop? Alongside the tools needed to work with it

Case in point, I have a Rust project with a target/ directory with about 10GB. Compile times from scratch takes about 10 minutes. (I do not love this)

With this mobile app I need to upload the code to the cloud, right? Or does OpenAI expects me to compile huge projects on my phone?

pickleRick2432• 2 months ago

No, the phone connects to your local device. This isn't "codex web" on mobile. Basically you work through your desktop on your phone. So to be clear, there are security risks (you can wipe your entire desktop from your phone).

LoganDark2• 2 months ago

The processes you're controlling are on your computer, similarly to Claude remote control.

skybrian• 2 months ago

I tried Codex web. It kinda sucks and OpenAI doesn't seem to be promoting it? Look elsewhere if you want a Linux VM in the cloud. (I quite like exe.dev and they do have good mobile support.)

cortesoft• 2 months ago

Not sure about how it works with Codex now, but with Claude you can just start a terminal session of claude code with your code checked out locally on your computer, and then enable remote control which lets you control that session from your phone.

So basically, it is like you are typing on your terminal on your computer from your phone.

ks6g10• 2 months ago

I just use tailscale and remote desktop.

LoganDark2• 2 months ago

I've been vibe-refactoring a fork of get-shit-done (a skill collection for coding agents) for about the past week. I've had to revisit the same ideas multiple times because the agent doesn't always get it right at first, but it's still so much faster than I could have been at the same work + it's already mostly working (I've been dogfooding it for a day or two now). And I have gotten by just bringing up issues I notice from the LLM's implementation comments, rather than actually inspecting the code even once so far.

(The refactor's been to support Jujutsu VCS.)

bugbuddy• 2 months ago

i.e. not looking at the actual code

You must be kidding me.

magicalhippo• 2 months ago

What OP said works quite well for a lot of tasks, and if you've set up base instructions on coding style they (Codex, Claude) generate code accordingly.

A key point is that after the "vibe" session you should also have a lot of tests written. So they can easily refactoring the code afterwards if there are major aspects you don't like when you get back to your desktop.

scrollaway• 2 months ago

I find funny the trend of software engineers being shocked at the idea that someone would issue a set of instructions to a coder and not look at the code, or only glance at it.

How do you think the world has worked for the past thirty years? AI has just caught up with human skill is all.

andai4• 2 months ago

There's a new kind of coding I call "vibe coding", where you fully give in to the vibes, embrace exponentials, and forget that the code even exists.

https://x.com/karpathy/status/1886192184808149383

Forgetting code exists is by definition not suitable for serious work. However, OP said in the following paragraph, that this would be a first draft, and that the code would actually be reviewed and tested properly before being integrated.

At which point it is by definition no longer vibe coding, because you do care about the code! It's just an AI assisted workflow, but now we call all of those vibe coding for some reason. (Naming things is hard!)

If vibe coding means not caring about the code, then a literal translation of the term would be "not caring about coding" coding.

rvz• 2 months ago

Unbelievable. This is the silent de-skilling of this industry.

Imagine saying that you don't need to look at the roads or have no hands on the wheel whilst driving because someone-else said that the car can 'drive' itself; therefore, no need for anyone (including taxi drivers) to learn how to drive.

Just because a machine can generate plausible looking code does not mean you don't need to look at it or not know how it works or why it doesn't work.

weird-eye-issue• 2 months ago

For major new features on my SaaS this is exactly what I do on my phone/laptop sometimes over days or weeks. I never look at the code until I get a feeling that it's far enough along and then I will hop into the actual code and start manually making changes or using CC locally to make the changes iteratively over weeks until it's ready for release. In the early stages of a major new feature/product it can be counterproductive to closely monitor the AI. Of course like you said in your comment this requires very very strong knowledge of the code base and a lot of experience with using the agents in the first place. But once you can do this sort of workflow it's very powerful because you can do this in parallel with other work (just an hour or two per day over a week or two on your phone can get you to a really good first draft even on a major new feature/product. And of course I'm not saying it's ready for production that can still take weeks but that's not really the point)

CSMastermind• 2 months ago

I mean I'd love for them to take it further. If you put me on the phone with a talented software engineer I could supervise all sorts of changes. I wish I could do the same thing with my coding agent. Being able to be like, "hey remind me what's in that database table ... got it okay let's rename it to ..."

I'm also completely fine if it gives me hold mustic while it's working.

Would make my walks much more productive.

teodosin• 2 months ago

I was doing exactly this for a while with Claude Code. Very helpful when I'm away from home but can't stop thinking about my project. The remote agent has access to all the docs and instructions in my repo and most of the time gives me a decent draft I just need to polish later.

I unsubscribed from Claude after the performance regressions around the time of the Opus 4.7 update made it unusable. Been using Codex since then, and I've definitely missed being able to make these drafts. So I'm looking forward to trying this out.

kubb• 2 months ago

So, the same thing we've all been doing already with Termius and Tailscale, just locked into ChatGPT?

lxgr2• 2 months ago

Yes, in the same sense as Dropbox offers essentially no functionality on top of a rsync script.

hmokiguess2• 2 months ago

I am not sure I understand the time savings you're describing here. Do you mean you saved the "time to write prompt into the text input box" because you got to do that sooner from your phone rather than write down your idea and do it when you got back to your computer?

Wouldn't you be doing the exact same thing had you been sitting at your computer when you had the idea?

Perhaps the person who wrote that had the mindset of "when I am away from my work, I want to be disconnected and present with the world around me, this updates now makes it so that I now have an excuse to carry work with me"

Maybe they're in a toxic/abusive work relationship where taking breaks is already difficult and this might lead to justifying working from your phone as "expected"

My question to you is: what is wrong with moving a little slower? Is time to prompt an optimization of a real bottleneck?

orangebread• 2 months ago

You can use STT and include a workflow that automatically extracts the requirements (filters all the um's, ah's, pauses) and it becomes more like an interaction where you act as the Product Owner/Manager and Codex is your Architect/Dev.

At least, that's how I code through my phone. But it does require some forethought in establishing your automated workflows. I'm at the point where my entire dev system has established templates for CI/CD so I can preview work in staging and production is still a manual step (obviously).

ssalka• 2 months ago

Sometimes I get random inspiration for an idea while out on a walk or otherwise away from the computer. It's really nice to be able to throw a couple instructions out there, let your agent run with it, and see what it came up with later. Sometimes I do this 3-5 times before returning to my computer. IMO it's really nice to be able to start from X% done rather than 0% when I finally do sit down to review/iterate on the code.

overgard• 2 months ago

When I hear about features like this, at a certain point it looks more like compulsion/addiction instead of a useful thing to do. Like, if I'm at some sort of activity or event maybe I should just be at that thing instead of trying to aim the slop cannon 24/7

albert_e• 2 months ago

AI agents for devops and troubleshooting has been fairly powerful for me.

I have Claude Code with access to Azure environment (via CLI) where app components are deployed and also to the code base repo. I paste an error message or explain the symptom. CC works through various configuration checks and network tests etc across the Azure resource list and also the application logic and surfaces the root cause of the error precisely. Easily 1-2 days of effort if I had done all those myself (this is an inherited code base) -- would have had to learn a few of those skills along the way or may not have thought about some of the checks if i were on my own -- all done in about 45 mins with basic human-in-the-loop guidance.

Of course learning it the hard way would have meant deeper understanding and first-hand exprience for me. But there is no guarantee I wouldnt have given up mid way frustrated or other priorities prevented me from pursuing this in full.

osullip2• 2 months ago

I have been doing exactly this by bookmarking Codex and using 'Add to home screen'

Process (all on my phone)

* Create new repo on github

* Tell Chatgpt the project and ask for a readme and agents file

* Manual upload the files to github

* Go to Codex and tell it to review the code and carry out steps in readme

* Connect project to Vercel

* If needed, create a DB

* Ask ChatGPT for the schema and run the sql

I have done this kind of work for years and now I can create things like this on the way back from a meeting. It's broken my business model by the way.

Here is one of the apps, for mental health - pretty much all done on my phone.

https://you-are-ok.vercel.app/

So having Codex in app removes one little barrier and I will take that.

osullip2• 2 months ago

Sorry, replying to own post but I have to add this.

Actions were not working on the android app. Known issue for a long time

https://community.openai.com/t/gpts-custom-api-calls-not-wor...

I did the same solution described above - Bookmarked the custom GPT, added to home screen and would run it in browser.

It seems to be working now. So I can start building out custom GPTs, share with my clients and not have a big training piece to onboard them.

Edit: https://chatgpt.com/g/g-697edc35e2888191a331217cd0483a67-men...

Take a pic of a menu and create a group meal/degustation for your budget.

gropo2• 2 months ago

I wrote tmux-browse on GitHub in order to use codex and Claude code in a browser pane.

https://github.com/itsmygithubacct/tmux-browse

gropo2• 2 months ago

Side effect: manage the same session on your cellphone as is running on your server

mintflow• 2 months ago

Oh no, I am just adding codex integration to my app with in-app tailscale networking, communicating with codex app server via websocket over tailscale

But I will still consider to release it anyways

gchamonlive• 2 months ago

This is good not because I could work on code on the go. Codex excels not only at that but also at crunching through text. It's nice that now I can get an agent in my phone that understands my notes in Logseq. It's like my journals can now talk back to me.

mindmesh• 2 months ago

The ability to unblock or redirect longer-running work from a phone seems underrated. Curious how often people will actually manage active coding threads this way.

satvikpendem9• 2 months ago

Somewhat related, some of these AI remote coding apps are iOS, what are people using for Android? Looks like some people are using terminal emulators to ssh into their machine and use the LLM CLIs but that seems clunky.

imjonse• 2 months ago

Hammock-driven development will get a new meaning.

mlaretallack• 2 months ago

A while ago I created a telegram bridge for AWS Kiro CLI, this allows my to talk to the agent running on my server from anywhere. Any remote access to any of these agents is a massive game changer, it means that you don't need to hover infront of the pc while it works away at the problems. It changes your workflow, but I do find you need to force yourself to "turn off", its easy to do that with the PC, eg, just walk away, but when you can just "get the agent to do one more change" while waiting to pick the kids up or taking the dog for a walk, it can get difficult to stop.

jwilliams2• 2 months ago

I wish they'd have done this in a separate Codex app. On desktop I greatly prefer having Codex separate from ChatGPT... As compared to Claude, which is growing so fast and adding features so quickly it seems bolted together (I get why they do it, integrations/MCP-wise).

This specific feature is more akin to Remote Control in Claude. You could already kick off Codex Cloud tasks (although it's just a little more fiddly to do so).

If you can move to Codex Cloud (or "Claude Code for the Web"), I think it's the superior approach. Start it there, and just pick it up from the PR if necessary.

sumedh4• 2 months ago

OpenAi wants non devs to start coding as well, its just going to confuse users when there are two Apps.

az2263• 2 months ago

This sucks. Codex was already in the mobile app. And Codex in the browser or in the app sucks because it's not the same as local Codex (VS Code or CLI). And you can't pick the model. Sucks a$$.

ClumsyLee• 2 months ago

Isn’t what you described exactly what they just released? Now it connects to local Codex and you can pick the model?

az2263• 2 months ago

What if you don't start on your laptop or workstation? Also, does the UI shown in the video reveal a model toggle? Doesn't look like it

Edit: actually it gets worse -- you can't start any tasks any longer in your mobile, you are required to sign in from your desktop/workstation. You can't "sign in" from your CLI.

Whoever made this, paper cuts I wish onto you. It sucks.

Edit2: actually you can ssh, so I presume that allows you to do the CLI -- and you still can do mobile first tasks, but it's not intuitive at all. Mobile first tasks you still can't pick the model, and I haven't tested the workstation connection one. That said, indeed paper cuts.

cooper_ganglia• 2 months ago

This is the EXACT evolution of this product that I've wanted. For simple tasks on some of my desktop machines, I don't want to mess with SSH or remoting into them, I just want to tell an AI agent what I need, let it build a plan that I press "Approve" on, and let it rip. This is the ClawdBot killer!

xenophonf• 2 months ago

Can someone explain how the ChatGPT Codex Connector works in concert with GitHub access controls? I am not sure how to add it to my GitHub repositories, accounts, or organizations without potentially giving any OpenAI customer access.

3ceee• 2 months ago

Nigerian engineers are going to have a time of their lives

GTonehour• 2 months ago

This feature could well be the reason OpenAI hired Peter Steinberger (OpenClaw).

rlt• 2 months ago

No.

andai4• 2 months ago

That was my thought too. Claude Code and Codex are very close to Claw already (general purpose computer use) and moving increasingly in that direction (mobile integrations, built in memory features etc.)

The main issue is reliability, so I think the corporations are going to take a much more gradual, piecemeal approach, and probably end up with something like Claw within a year.

sumedh4• 2 months ago

They are just copying features from Claude Code.

joshka3• 2 months ago

A mobile app was requested by many people before Peter joined OpenAI. Also the App Server was in place for the desktop app well before that too. See https://openai.com/index/unlocking-the-codex-harness/ for some history.

rexthonyy• 2 months ago

As the winner of the everything app is revealed, I foresee this feature integrated in it. One platform to manage all agents by any provider.

Riany• 2 months ago

The best part is you don't have to stay at home waiting codex thinking, you can go out grab a coffee while connect your Codex and ask it to work

refactor_master• 2 months ago

Surely you mean grab a coffee and sit back down at your desk in your corporate office, because working remotely while your agent also does so is just preposterous.

brtkwr• 2 months ago

Just tried it and it doesn't work... won't let me create a new task as the repo selection is disabled... works fine on my laptop on the other hand and have been using it for some time.

GanteRooibos• 2 months ago

So we can finally stop tailscale + ssh + codex. Nice

arend321• 2 months ago

I've been trying out various mobile, ai-assisted coding workflows.

Packing a Linux mini-pc in my rucksack, connected to display glasses, and voice-to-text with handy. Voice to text gets injected into a remote (Docker) codex session, running a hot reload web stack. I prompt to implement various features in an existing code base, where codex understands the structure and requirements. If a feature is done, I take a moment to inspect the results on the display glasses, then move onto the next feature or keep iterating. It's not perfect, but I was able to implement a couple of not too complex features while walking my local national park. The display glasses have a built-in 4-microphone array, and solid speakers. No need for a bulky headset or earbuds. Glasses come with monochromatic dimming, you can easily switch between dimming and see through.

If this comes with Linux integration, I will certainly give it a try.

mrasong• 2 months ago

Well, this just made it even easier to keep coding away from the desk.

oulipo2• 2 months ago

Start investigating a bug while waiting for your coffee.

So the whole idea is not to make work more efficient. It's just to make you work more, all the time, while waiting for your coffee, while in your commute.

Ask yourselves: is that the society we want?

smw• 2 months ago

Or just ask if you might want to do something productive while you wait for a train or sit in a taxi? Better than doom scrolling. Maybe you're working on a fun side project.

fluder_tw• 2 months ago

Wondering is it only me who vibe coded PWA mobile IDE and remote agent hosted on the laptop, which uses claude -p and local code to allow coding via mobile?

tasuki2• 2 months ago

The right way to do this is Google Jules: the boundary is a git repository, the interface is a chat window you can open anywhere (yes, even simultaneously), the output is a diff you can choose to merge.

But, for whatever reason, no one uses Google Jules.

I don't want my phone to have the ability to execute things on my computer. Much less with a LLM in-between!

sumedh4• 2 months ago

Google might shut it down soon.

tasuki2• 2 months ago

Yes, and there are two entirely unrelated reasons for that:

1. It appears no one's using it.

2. Google.

It makes me sad though. This is how I want agents to work!

upcoming-sesame2• 2 months ago

because you can't rely on anything from them same for Antigravity, feels abandoned

only surprising product that feels non google for me is Google Stitch https://stitch.withgoogle.com/

daralthus• 2 months ago

that's because it's an acquisition (http://usegalileo.ai/)

monotype• 2 months ago

I don’t think I’d review code from my phone, but I can definitely see myself using this to keep a task from stalling while I’m away from the laptop.

summarybot• 2 months ago

GPT is unusable, untrustworthy, unreliable now [may 2026] - SouthPark poked fun at GPT calling everything a brilliant idea and the retaliation by "Open"AI was to nerf any response that didn't denigrate the user and inflate the LLM.

blevinstein• 2 months ago

Nice to see some catch-up with Anthropic and others, but this doesn't actually offer cloud coding agents (my favorite Claude and Cursor capability).

I want to code from my mobile device when my laptop is off or unavailable, pushing PRs directly to GitHub. Codex mobile only works with a desktop machine, at which point, I'll just use that machine, what's the point.

atomashevic2• 2 months ago

Yes it does. Codex, three dots menu: Codex cloud

totaldude87• 2 months ago

Most of us are missing the point. This gives a direct access to my machine with just one tool and no setup ( apart from Coded setup)

Now I can run scripts as hoc or stop my loss making stock market script without going through the hoops

woodydesign• 2 months ago

Approve permission request on the go + Notify me when work/answer done, when need my attention.

Those two are killing features.

rprend2• 2 months ago

This is awesome. Exactly what openclaw was supposed to be. Im really impressed by how effortlessly it handles the file syncing.

My method of walking to work is back (going for an 8 hour walk , voice dictating the whole way)

cj• 2 months ago

Is 8 hours an exaggeration? If not, how do you walk that much without wrecking your feet?

rprend2• 2 months ago

That includes lunch, park bench, coffee shop to charge phone, etc, but yea. north brooklyn to coney island and back. ive only done it a few times , not 5 days a week

podnami• 2 months ago

Coding on the go is definitely a use case. Especially if you want something answered or make a big decision on an architectural change but need both docs and get informed about trade offs. The biggest productivity boost we made was auto deployment of new PRs so that the agent can make live changes and we can review stuff on the to. Suddenly you can do QA in a park in the sunshine without being in front of a desktop

danborn26• 2 months ago

Having Codex available on mobile seems really useful for reading and understanding quick PR reviews while away from the keyboard.

Spiritus• 2 months ago

Not available in Business or? I only see SSH connections in Desktop app and only cloud environments in the iOS app.

cylentwolf• 2 months ago

When will it release for Windows App? I sometimes hate being outside the Apple Ecosystem when it comes to being a developer.

yashau• 2 months ago

Hmm. No Windows support yet. I will continue using my Telegram bridge then.

lxgr2• 2 months ago

It might not look like it at a first glance, but between this and the "everyday work mode" preference on Codex for macOS, it seems to me that these are OpenAI's incremental steps towards an Openclaw-like product offering.

chris_money2023• 2 months ago

I prefer GitHub Copilot Agent Session for this flow since it's in its own container/VM naturally and you can spawn from the Github Mobile app, except it is a bummer how much of your actions minutes that and CI/CD will consume.

If I were to do this Codex flow I would want to have it setup in a dev container, most people are probably not going to do that, so we are going to see a lot of vulnerabilities introduced / computers "breaking". Breaking in quotes because the computer is not actually broken, but to a novice it might appear it is, when in reality it's just out of disk space or the agent executed a setting, it shouldn't have. Unfortunately, if the computer is out of disk space, a novice won't be able to spawn their coding agent to fix it, so their next logical course of action is Geek Squad/IT? I don't even know.

jatora4• 2 months ago

No we won't see that because the whole 'broke my computer' trope pretty much never happens to people unless they are researchers going wild in a VM to trigger it. And pure novices are just... not using these tools, and when they do, at most they lose a spreadsheet. (and that hardly happens either, if at all)

This is a non-issue problem raised by anti-ai zealots, much like data center water use is overblown. Headlines and lies.

chris_money2023• 2 months ago

I am an engineer and just the other day forgot to set a disk quota on a container I gave an agent and it almost reached disk space running a simulation that was logging to a DB overnight. If that would have happened I probably would have lost ability to ssh and that computer isn't connected to a display or keyboard so would have been a huge headache for me to reset.

And novices ARE absolutely using these things, I have a handful of friends with 0 CS background using claude to write apps, automation, etc

jpease• 2 months ago

Seems appropriate I can craft my commits in the bathroom now.

joshka3• 2 months ago

One thing not to sleep on here is that the new ssh access enables you to dockerize your dev environments while still maintaining a local control plane. Interact local, execute remote.

dirtbag__dad• 2 months ago

Is anyone else troublingly addicted to your code agents? I’m constantly thinking about work because work is “just wrapping up” always now. I go to see one thing is done, outside of work hours, then find myself kicking the next thing off.

Who is this good for? My company, Anthropic/Openai, but not me? Maybe if I was investing in a side project I’d feel differently.

At any rate, the thought of bringing the agent out of my work machine and into my pocket or bed with me is terrifying. I hope it doesn’t come to that.

Codex is now in the ChatGPT mobile app

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