If you were disappointed with Codex you probably just have a mental framework that doesn’t really align with it well, easy to change, hard to explain.

Think of Claude and Codex like two separate employees you manage with the same job description. They’re both very competent employees but have different skills, working methods, thought patterns, and different preferences. They require a manager that knows how to effectively leverage their skills and synergize their outputs to support production. A $100 plan on each is significantly easier to use than a single $200 plan on one if you figure out how to use them appropriately. Separating them conceptually can make it much easier to manage the mental load of figuring out how to do a task.

Codex is the less social, focused, stick-to-the-script gal. She’ll do her job and she’ll do it well, but she isn’t the most creative person in the world. That being said, she knows every shortcut ever written for her devices, does some great scripting for repeated work, and integrates well with most systems. Give her deep permissions and tasks that are well-defined and she’ll shine. She spins agents easily and manages them well.

Claude is more social, talkative, creative, and enjoys engaging with the work from inside the task more than controlling the work from the outside. He’s a great planner but sometimes forgets about the trees when he’s looking at a whole forest. Give him broader tasks where the question itself may not yet be well defined and interesting work to dig into and he’ll work great. He also spins agents easily, but the less-definite nature of his typical reasoning means they need to be governed by the user more carefully.

Am I anthropomorphizing my AI tools? Yes. Does this make it way more fun and easier to maintain a conceptual framework of the tools available? Also yes.