I’ve been experimenting with OpenAI’s new Codex app for engineering work that launched on February 2nd, and I’m not impressed.

No subagents from what I can tell. It gets stuck on stuff that shouldn’t be blockers. The gpt-5.2-codex model feels slow. I don’t care about the existing skills enough to try to set one up for it.

I did sign up for a free month trial of ChatGPT Plus though, so I’m going to give it a few more attempts before my time runs out. But so far, it doesn’t feel like a force multiplier the way Claude Code or Amp Code does. Even Open Code feels more productive.

Maybe I’ll have better luck with Codex on the CLI? We’ll see.

There’s something about flat-fee billing that feels so much better than watching tokens drain away. Less constrained and more open to trying new things I guess.

I appreciate that they went through the effort of building what looks like a native Swift app instead of yet another VS Code fork.

I think Codex desktop app is aimed at competing with Cursor’s market share, or maybe it’s some attempt at solving whatever direction Claude Desktop is heading.

It doesn’t feel like it’s solving my problems as a developer who already has workflows that I know work.

Back to the CLI pour moi.