163 pointsby mikeevans5 hours ago24 comments
  • Alifatisk4 hours 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.

    • firesteelrain15 minutes ago
      How much better is it than Claude? I have both but Claude sucks up so many tokens.
      • bobbylarrybobby4 minutes 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.
    • thorum2 hours 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 hours 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.

        • fragmedean hour ago
          Yes, the free version doesn't have access to the same models that the paid does.
          • debian3an hour ago
            You have access to 5.5 xhigh on free. Which model is missing except the 5.3 that run on cerebras?
          • wahnfrieden42 minutes ago
            It's only missing the trash models. Likely a user skill issue.
      • throw0317201917 minutes ago
        The free version of ChatGPT is definitely worse as well. My SO uses the free version and I can tell a significant downgrade.
      • wahnfrieden2 hours ago
        Post your chat session
        • ssl-337 minutes ago
          Can Codex chats be shared? (This is a genuine question; so far, I've only used Codex in CLI on Linux.)
      • dakolli29 minutes ago
        I'm unimpressed by all LLMs, and especially unimpressed by the people claiming to be impressed by them.
    • Rover2224 hours ago
      I think it's free for about 2 useful requests and then you have to upgrade or wait?
      • melagonster36 minutes ago
        Switching to GPT 5.4-mini can increase the number of requests we can use freely.
      • osiris9702 hours ago
        So basically a 20$ Claude plan lmao
        • replwoacause2 hours ago
          I stopped using my Claude subscription because it became so prohibitive. Back to ChatGPT and Codex full time and been pretty happy. I miss the tone/writing style of Claude, but don't miss the frustration of being told I've reached my plan limits in a comically short amount of time.
          • dmdan hour ago
            Using these prompts/steering[0], setting Base style to Friendly, Warm to More, Enthusiastic to Default, Headers, Lists, and Emoji to Less, I have found I can get gpt-5.5 about ... 80% of the way there to writing as non-annoyingly as Claude. And it's so much faster and has such higher limits that that's worth it for me.

            I also put together this ridiculous thing[1] because I missed the font and color scheme of Claude.

            [0] https://gist.githubusercontent.com/dmd/91e9ca98b2c252a185e8e...

            [1] https://github.com/dmd/aimpostor

            • firesteelrain9 minutes ago
              How do you fit that entire prompt in the customized instructions ?
            • replwoacausean hour ago
              Thanks, I’ll give those a try!
              • dmdan hour ago
                FYI I'm actively working on aimpostor, so check back in a couple days for some quality improvements. (I'm definitely not going to bother with a Sparkle updater or anything like that.)
          • Razengan2 hours ago
            on Codex I ran into limits maybe like 2 times in 3 months, after doing several "upgrade this experimental game to my latest shared framework" passes on 5.5 Extra High
            • ssl-329 minutes ago
              On which plan?

              I can go through a 5-hour limit with a $20/mo Plus subscription in a few minutes with 5.5 Extra High. This causes me to reserve the latest/best rev for the harder problems.

              5.5 really does seem to be very superior to 5.4, but it's also very expensive to run: The gas gauge moves fast. It's not very clearly defined whether 5.5 will cost less to get a problem solved quickly, or if a bunch of automatic iterations of 5.4 will solve it less-expensively. Both are often frustrating to me on the $20 plan.

              (Also: Are you sure you're seeing it right? 5.5 has been in the wild for less than a month, so far. https://openai.com/index/introducing-gpt-5-5/ )

    • throwaway6137464 hours ago
      [dead]
  • jsemrau7 minutes ago
    I don't understand OpenAI's product strategy.
  • jumploops3 hours 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).

    • aiscoming2 hours 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
    • keylean hour 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?
      • selcukaan hour ago
        They are unimpressed by their (current) ability to use it, not the technology.
    • fowlie3 hours 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!
      • esperent35 minutes ago
        I don't see any way to use that on a phone.
  • reassess_blind2 hours 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.

    • barrkel2 hours 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.
    • wahnfrieden2 hours ago
      That’s this announcement.
      • reassess_blindan hour 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.

    • Salgat2 hours ago
      I wish codex supported this, I use it all the time for claude.
    • iamjs2 hours ago
      I think the `/remote-control` feature does this, if I understand you correctly.
      • DonsDiscountGas2 hours 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)
      • maille2 hours ago
        Does it work on windows? And how do you then remote in?
    • Razengan2 hours ago
      [dead]
  • vohk4 hours 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 hours 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.

      • embedding-shape3 hours 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 :)

        • tekacs2 hours ago
          Try turning off LTO. Their default codex-rs/Cargo.toml uses `lto = "fat"`, which is... expensive and slow and... you really really don't need it for a local build that you're not distributing.

          In my experience, although the build is a little slow, it's that LTO step that takes a million years.

      • vohk3 hours ago
        Oh, that's promising, thanks! I've just been using the npm version.
      • asadm4 hours ago
        thanks. i dont use the app and so this is cool
  • miohtamaan hour 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.

  • impulser_2 hours 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.

  • iridione3 hours 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.
    • thornewolf3 hours 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)
      • jpalomakian hour ago
        Tell it to create html summaries with diagrams and sidebar for navigation.

        Or ask Codex to create image that explains xyz.

      • ssl-32 hours 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?

    • deadbabean hour 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.
    • ukuina2 hours ago
      [dead]
  • ahmadyan2 hours 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.

    • wahnfrieden2 hours ago
      That was cloud codex. Not comparable
  • asadm4 hours 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.
  • sbinneean hour 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.

  • schnitzelstoat4 hours ago
    This is really useful for when you just need to approve plans or make small decisions.
  • tekacs4 hours 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.

    • 20kleagues4 hours 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).
      • hamza_q_12 minutes 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

      • RayVR4 hours 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 hours 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.
  • fHr3 hours ago
    rust and opensource W
  • 5 hours ago
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  • Razengan2 hours 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)

  • cyanydeez2 hours 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.

  • Squab3 hours ago
    friends, you don’t have to always be productive. leave the agent on the computer and take care of yourself.
    • jorl173 hours 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.

  • 3 hours ago
    undefined
  • comment0r4 hours ago
    [dead]
  • AIMC3 hours ago
    [flagged]
  • randomsimonan hour ago
    [dead]
  • stavros4 hours 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

  • mv44 hours ago
    Can someone recommend an IDE that can be used with a self-hosted model (via OpenAI or similar)?
    • aiscoming2 hours ago
      vs code supports local models (bring your own key/model)

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

      • no-name-here37 minutes 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?

    • suyashan hour ago
      Look up OpenCode