While we wait for wisdom, OpenAI releases a research preview of a new software engineering agent called Codex, because they previously released a lightweight open-source coding agent in terminal called Codex CLI and if OpenAI uses non-confusing product names it violates the nonprofit charter. The promise, also reflected in a number of rival coding agents, is to graduate from vibe coding. Why not let the AI do all the work on its own, typically for 1-30 minutes?

The answer is that it's still early days, but already many report this is highly useful.

Introducing Codex

Sam Altman: today we are introducing codex.

it is a software engineering agent that runs in the cloud and does tasks for you, like writing a new feature of fixing a bug.

you can run many tasks in parallel.

it is amazing and exciting how much software one [...]

---

Outline:

(00:43) Introducing Codex

(04:24) System Card Addendum

(06:37) Update to Codex CLI

(07:50) Overall Reception

(09:36) Codex Offers Mundane Utility

(15:25) Codex Doesn't Offer Mundane Utility

(18:36) Our Price Cheap

(20:38) Two Kinds of Agent

---

First published:
May 20th, 2025

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/z8FWLLjLHtKBENMi9/the-codex-of-ultimate-vibing

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

---

Images from the article:

Two graphs comparing performance metrics for SWE-Bench Verified and OpenAI tasks.

The left graph shows accuracy versus number of attempts, while the right bar graph displays accuracy percentages across different models, ranging from 11% to 75%.

Screenshot of safety and privacy settings explaining system operator safeguards.

The image shows a user interface information panel titled

Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

“The Codex of Ultimate Vibing” by Zvi

LessWrong (30+ Karma)