Comment by pickleRick243
9 hours ago
(Someone deleted a comment about why you'd want a mobile Codex app. This is the answer I wrote.)
Once you've used these coding agents a lot, you develop a pretty intuitive feel for how they work, what they're capable of, what they're good at, and where their weaknesses are. Hopefully, you're already pretty familiar with the code base you're working on. Combining the two, this means you can get quite far essentially "vibe coding" (i.e. not looking at the actual code) on a new branch.
So if you have some idea or some issue you want to fix on the go, you just iterate with the agent for a bit (presumably no more than a couple hours) until the agent outputs an implementation. Here, I do claim there is some "skill" (which is a function of your codebase familiarity, general SWE ability, and facility with AI agents), and if you're good, this implementation will be halfway decent a high percentage of the time. Then when you're back at your desktop, you can review the changes carefully/do some proper testing/debugging etc. But you've saved a good chunk of time- an initial draft is already waiting for you.
For major new features on my SaaS this is exactly what I do on my phone/laptop sometimes over days or weeks. I never look at the code until I get a feeling that it's far enough along and then I will hop into the actual code and start manually making changes or using CC locally to make the changes iteratively over weeks until it's ready for release. In the early stages of a major new feature/product it can be counterproductive to closely monitor the AI. Of course like you said in your comment this requires very very strong knowledge of the code base and a lot of experience with using the agents in the first place. But once you can do this sort of workflow it's very powerful because you can do this in parallel with other work (just an hour or two per day over a week or two on your phone can get you to a really good first draft even on a major new feature/product. And of course I'm not saying it's ready for production that can still take weeks but that's not really the point)
But what if the code is on my laptop? Alongside the tools needed to work with it
Case in point, I have a Rust project with a target/ directory with about 10GB. Compile times from scratch takes about 10 minutes. (I do not love this)
With this mobile app I need to upload the code to the cloud, right? Or does OpenAI expects me to compile huge projects on my phone?
No, the phone connects to your local device. This isn't "codex web" on mobile. Basically you work through your desktop on your phone. So to be clear, there are security risks (you can wipe your entire desktop from your phone).
Not if you use Linux; app not available yet.
3 replies →
Not sure about how it works with Codex now, but with Claude you can just start a terminal session of claude code with your code checked out locally on your computer, and then enable remote control which lets you control that session from your phone.
So basically, it is like you are typing on your terminal on your computer from your phone.
I tried Codex web. It kinda sucks and OpenAI doesn't seem to be promoting it? Look elsewhere if you want a Linux VM in the cloud. (I quite like exe.dev and they do have good mobile support.)
It's beyond terrible. Like they're routing to gpt4o mini with low effort behind the scenes. Just let us pick the model and the effort.
The processes you're controlling are on your computer, similarly to Claude remote control.
I've been vibe-refactoring a fork of get-shit-done (a skill collection for coding agents) for about the past week. I've had to revisit the same ideas multiple times because the agent doesn't always get it right at first, but it's still so much faster than I could have been at the same work + it's already mostly working (I've been dogfooding it for a day or two now). And I have gotten by just bringing up issues I notice from the LLM's implementation comments, rather than actually inspecting the code even once so far.
(The refactor's been to support Jujutsu VCS.)
> i.e. not looking at the actual code
You must be kidding me.
> There's a new kind of coding I call "vibe coding", where you fully give in to the vibes, embrace exponentials, and forget that the code even exists.
https://x.com/karpathy/status/1886192184808149383
Forgetting code exists is by definition not suitable for serious work. However, OP said in the following paragraph, that this would be a first draft, and that the code would actually be reviewed and tested properly before being integrated.
At which point it is by definition no longer vibe coding, because you do care about the code! It's just an AI assisted workflow, but now we call all of those vibe coding for some reason. (Naming things is hard!)
If vibe coding means not caring about the code, then a literal translation of the term would be "not caring about coding" coding.
> Forgetting code exists is by definition not suitable for serious work
This is just like everyone who says, “An iPad is not suitable for serious work.”
By which they (and you) generally mean, “What I do is serious work. What you do is unserious work.”
I think I do serious work – I mean they pay me for it? And I have only copy/pasted and just run whatever code’s been generated by AI for the past 12 months or so. Whenever I can I just let the AI run it itself.
Sad to learn that I’ve been so unserious all this time.
> Naming things is hard!
Indeed.
What OP said works quite well for a lot of tasks, and if you've set up base instructions on coding style they (Codex, Claude) generate code accordingly.
A key point is that after the "vibe" session you should also have a lot of tests written. So they can easily refactoring the code afterwards if there are major aspects you don't like when you get back to your desktop.
I find funny the trend of software engineers being shocked at the idea that someone would issue a set of instructions to a coder and not look at the code, or only glance at it.
How do you think the world has worked for the past thirty years? AI has just caught up with human skill is all.
Unbelievable. This is the silent de-skilling of this industry.
Imagine saying that you don't need to look at the roads or have no hands on the wheel whilst driving because someone-else said that the car can 'drive' itself; therefore, no need for anyone (including taxi drivers) to learn how to drive.
Just because a machine can generate plausible looking code does not mean you don't need to look at it or not know how it works or why it doesn't work.