[cube2222]

I’ve checked out codex after the glowing reviews here around September / October and it was, all in all, a letdown (this was writing greenfield modules in a larger existing codebase).

Codex was very context efficient, but also slow (though I used the highest thinking effort), and didn’t adapt do the wider codebase almost at all (even if I pointed it at the files to reference / get inspired by). Lots of defensive programming, hacky implementations, not adapting to the codebase style and patterns.

With Claude Code and starting each conversation by referencing a couple existing files, I am able to get it to write code mostly like I would’ve written it. It adapts to existing patterns, adjusts to the code style, etc. I can steer it very well.

And now with the new cheaper faster Opus it’s also quite an improvement. If you kick off sonnet with a long list of constraints (e.g. 20) it would often ignore many. Opus is much better at “keeping more in mind” while writing the code.

Note: yes, I do also have an agent.md / claude.md. But I also heavily rely on warming the context up with some context dumping at conversation starts.

[throwaway12345t]

All codex conversations need to be caveat with the model because it varies significantly. Codex requires very little tweaking but you do need to select the highest thinking model if you’re writing code and recommend the highest thinking NON-code model for planning. That’s really it, it takes task time up to 5-20m but it’s usually great.

Then I ask Opus to take a pass and clean up to match codebase specs and it’s usually sufficient. Most of what I do now is detailed briefs for Codex, which is…fine.

[dworks]

I will jump between a ChatGPT window and a VSCode window with the Codex plugin. I'll create an initial prompt in ChatGPT, which will ask the coding agent to audit the current implementation, then draft an implementation plan. The plan bounces between Chat and Codex about 5 times, with Chat telling Codex how to improve. Then Codex implements, creates an implementation summary, which I give to Chat. Chat then asks to add a couple of things fixes, then it's done.

[IgorPartola]

Why non-thinking model? Also 5-20 minutes?! I guess I don’t know what kind of code you are writing but for my web app backends/frontends planning takes like 2-5 minutes tops with Sonnet and I have yet to feel the need to even try Opus.