I used to use Codex CLI, and now I’m curious how people who’ve actually switched to the Codex app feel about it.

Does the app feel better than CLI in real use?
What’s better, and what’s worse?
Do you find yourself using it more often, or going back to CLI for serious work?

I’m especially curious about:

• speed / responsiveness

• workflow comfort

• coding experience

• whether it feels more practical for daily use

Would love to hear from people who have used both.

Giving the CLI full autonomy causes it to rewrite so much shit that I lose track of everything. It feels like I’m forced to vibe-code rather than actually code. It’s a bit of a hassle when it comes to the small details, but it’s absolute toast when it comes to anything security related. Like I fixed Y but broke X and then I’m left trying to figure out what got broken. What’s even scarier is I have no clue if it breaks tested components, it’s like operating in a complete black box.

My claude-code-best-practice registry crossed 8,000+ stars — so I built the same thing for OpenAI Codex CLI. It covers configs, profiles, skills, orchestration patterns, sandbox/approval policies, MCP servers, and CI/CD recipes — all documented with working examples you can copy directly into your projects.

Repo Link: https://github.com/shanraisshan/codex-cli-best-practice

My claude-code-best-practice registry crossed 8,000+ stars — so I built the same thing for OpenAI Codex CLI. It covers configs, profiles, skills, orchestration patterns, sandbox/approval policies, MCP servers, and CI/CD recipes — all documented with working examples you can copy directly into your projects.

Repo Link: https://github.com/shanraisshan/codex-cli-best-practice

My main use case is refactoring code while keeping the algorithm exactly the same. For people who’ve tried both: is there any major difference between Codex and Claude Code for this kind of work?

Right now I use ChatGPT Plus every day and I really like the ideas and suggestions it gives me. My impression is that Claude is stricter about sticking to the existing data and structure, but I’m wondering if the real-world difference is actually that big or not.

I've been collecting practical tips for getting the most out of Codex CLI. Here are 24 tips organized by category, plus key resources straight from the Codex team.

Repo: https://github.com/shanraisshan/codex-cli-best-practice

I was using Claude Code for a while, but after seeing some posts about Codex CLI, I decided to try it out, and I’m really glad I did.

Even with just the OpenAI Plus plan, I’m not constantly running into usage limits like I was with Claude. That alone makes a huge difference. GPT-5 feels a lot smarter to me. It handles complex stuff better imo.

Only thing that bugs me is how many permissions Codex CLI asks for (I think there's an option to stop asking for permissions?). But overall, it’s been a much smoother experience.

Anyone else switched?

I have been trying the codex app.

Is it just me or is the App a bit dumber than the CLI?

Hey folks,

I’ve been slowly trying out Codex CLI for a bit, and I’m finding it surprisingly hard to get a sense of what a decent, real-world setup actually looks like.

There’s a lot of scattered info out there about skills, subagents, orchestrators, MCPs etc., but very few end-to-end examples or “starting templates” that show how people are actually wiring these together in practice.

What is your workflow? Do you use different models for different subagents? What are the must-have MCPs?

I tried simply adding the Superpowers that I used with CC relatively successfully, but in Codex that setup seemed to be quite slow. Also Codex seems to be more token hungry compared to OpenCode, but I have very limited with them right now.

Hi,

OpenAI released their Codex CLI. It brings an AI coding agent directly to your terminal.

Do you find it useful for shell-based tasks? What do you use it for?

Automating file edits or refactoring code snippets ?? Isn't it better to integrate an LLM with an IDE? Cursor, VS Code, Github Copilot etc etc.

I suppose it's useful if you automate tasks in your terminal. But it's only something I do occasionally, when I train models on cloud computers, I commit/pull code back and forth between my computer and the cloud instance via Github. Can you give me your use cases?

Thanks.

Opus 4.1 is a beast of a coding model, but I'd suggest to any Claude Max user to at least try Codex CLI for a day. It can also use your ChatGPT subscription now and I've been getting a ton of usage out of my Plus tier. Even with Sonnet, Claude Pro would have limited me LONG ago.

A few thoughts:

• While I still prefer CC + Opus 4.1 overall, I actually prefer the code that Codex CLI + GPT-5 writes. It's closer to the code I'd also write.

• I've used CC over Bedrock and Vertex for work and the rate limits were getting really ridiculous. Not sure this also happens with the Anthropic API, but it's really refreshing how quick and stable GPT-5 performs over Codex CLI.

• As of today Claude Code is a much more feature rich and complete tool compared to Codex. I miss quite a few things coming from CC, but core functionality is there and works well.

• GPT-5 seems to have a very clear edge on debugging.

• GPT-5 finds errors/bugs while working on something else, which I haven't noticed this strongly with Claude.

• Codex CLI now also supports MCP, although support for image inputs doesn't seem to work.

• Codex doesn't ship with fetch or search, so be sure to add those via MCP. I'm using my own

• If your budget ends at $20 per month, I think ChatGPT might be the best value for your money

What's your experience?

Trying to understand how the Codex app is structured here

Is it essentially a wrapper around the CLI, or does it have its own separate update cycle and capabilities?

Main reason I’m asking: if I use the Codex app, do I automatically benefit from CLI updates and improvements, or are they versioned independently?

Hey there,

as slowly more and more CLI Agents are appearing and there is potentially more to select and keep an eye out for, I was wanting to hear how others have experienced other tools & the respective subscriptions?

Claude Code:
I've been using CC now for a while on the 5x Plan, it does work great, mostly, sometimes there is a bit of hiccup or it just does some bullshitery but as long as the task is in a given "context size" it does perform well. I recently had to use it to debug an issue/bug, unfortunately not super aware where and how it occurs, that was the first time that CC was unable to really perform anything relevant, as by simply trying to grep/search files and do a few web clicks it would fill up the context window and after that it was pretty much caught on a loop. But that aside, one big issue I have, the second it gets close to the context window limit or that my "limit" will reach, it will basically lie and say he has tested and everything is fine and apparently I build a production application. What works really well though is the Integration with various MCP's and tool calling.

Qwen Coder:
This recently came out, and one can use it for free by just signing in with your account, I have yet to hit the limits for this, it offers a similar performance to Sonnet 4.0, and features a 1m context window. I have to say Qwen Coder has been far superior in my case when it came to pure coding tasks, it seems to do proper research in the codebase before starting to edit random files in order to not break existing functionality (usually it spends a good 150-200k on researching). It is a tad on the slower side in terms of responses, but that may be because I am not using the API. That being said, the issue I encountered is, it doesn't do very well with certain MCP's, it gets occasionally confused with Playwright and how to use it, but if it doesn't it somehow clicks so fast that one can barely read/react what it does, whereas Claude takes his time here. Given the Qwen Coder is a fork from Gemini CLI and that it just came out, this looks extremely promising and i would get a subscription if it was offered as the pure code performance seems to be superior to CC in my few use-cases (php, js, and some svelte)

Codex CLI:
I have to admit I was not aware until very recently that one can use the ChatGPT subscription (plus,team,pro) to use the Codex CLI. I just tested it for roughly two nights, but I am extremely pleased on how ChatGPT 5 performs for certain debugging / coding tasks. It also seems to "watch" out for other bugs/potential improvements even if it is not part of the main task. I didn't test the MCP support out yet, but it seems to be supported and given that the limits are not that quickly hit with the 20€ subscription I might give it a serious go and feels like a potential alternative to CC if Claude decides to fumble around with the models/limits too much. I couldn't find any info if it supports GPT 5 Pro, but I couldn't seem to find a way to change the base model to it. However extremely pleased with this so far.

Gemini CLI:
Not much to say as I'm not willing to use the API as a private person for a few hobby / work related tasks, despite that I occasionally give it a shot, as the 2.5 Pro performs so much better in architectural tasks than Opus or any other model, but unfortunately the free limits are used up after 5 min. I hope Google also offers to use the Ultra subscription as a way to authenticate.

So just curious what others think and if you have looked for alternatives?

Just saw the new Codex App launch. Planning to try it lately, but wanted to share some initial thoughts.

First impression - feels similar to Conductor(I use it a lot recently), emphasizing git worktree for parallel task handling. Interesting that OpenAI went with a GUI-first approach instead of doubling down on Terminal UI like Claude Code did.

I think CLI/TUI is still the best execution environment for AI agents, but not necessarily the most efficient human-AI interface.

For vibe coding beginners, Codex's GUI is definitely more approachable - lower barrier to entry. But for those used to Claude Code CLI, it might actually feel like a step back. Once you're comfortable with the terminal, a coding agent's chat window doesn't need that much screen real estate anymore.

Some open source projects are exploring this space more aggressively, trying to find the sweet spot between execution power and interaction efficiency. 

Feels like there's room for something new to emerge here - maybe a new Cursor-level product that gets this balance right.

Anyone else tried it yet? Curious how it compares to your current workflow.

I've been testing OpenAI's Codex CLI vs Claude Code in a 500k codebase which has a React Vite frontend and a ASP .NET 9 API, MySQL DB hosted on Azure. My takeaways from my use cases (or watch them from the YT video link in the comments):

- Boy oh boy, Codex CLI has caught up BIG time with GPT5 High Reasoning, I even preferred it to Claude Code in some implementations

- Codex uses GPT 5 MUCH better than in other AI Coding tools like Cursor

- Vid: https://youtu.be/MBhG5__15b0

- Codex was lacking a simple YOLO mode when I tested. You had to acknowledge not running in a sandbox AND allow it to never ask for approvals, which is a bit annoying, but you can just create an alias like codex-yolo for it

- Claude Code actually had more shots (error feedback/turns) than Codex to get things done

- Claude Code still has more useful features, like subagents and hooks. Notifications from Codex are still in a bit of beta

- GPT5 in Codex stops less to ask questions than in other AI tools, it's probably because of the released official GPT5 Prompting Guide by OpenAI

What is your experience with both tools?

I’m surprised how limited it still feels. There’s basically no real Windows support, and it’s missing a bunch of the features that are already baked into other AI-assisted dev tools.

Given how much hype there is around Codex and coding automation in general, it feels weird that it’s lagging this much. Is it just not a priority for OpenAI right now? Or are they quietly cooking something bigger behind the scenes before rolling out major updates?

Like they should definetly have the resources for it and I can‘t imagine some of these features taking this long.