> With Codex (5.3), the framing is an interactive collaborator: you steer it mid-execution, stay in the loop, course-correct as it works.

> With Opus 4.6, the emphasis is the opposite: a more autonomous, agentic, thoughtful system that plans deeply, runs longer, and asks less of the human.

Ain't the UX is the exact opposite? Codex thinks much longer before gives you back the answer.

I'm personally 100% convinced (assuming prices stay reasonable) that the Codex approach is here to stay.

Having a human in the loop eliminates all the problems that LLMs have and continously reviewing small'ish chunks of code works really well from my experience.

It saves so much time having Codex do all the plumbing so you can focus on the actual "core" part of a feature.

LLMs still (and I doubt that changes) can't think and generalize. If I tell Codex to implement 3 features he won't stop and find a general solution that unifies them unless explicitly told to. This makes it kinda pointless for the "full autonomy" approach since effecitly code quality and abstractions completely go down the drain over time. That's fine if it's just prototyping or "throwaway" scripts but for bigger codebases where longevity matters it's a dealbreaker.

I think it's the opposite. Especially considering Codex started out as a web app that offers very little interactivity: you are supposed to drop a request and let it run automatously in a containerized environment; you can then follow up on it via chat --- no interactive code editing.

Good breakdown.

I usually want the codex approach for code/product "shaping" iteratively with the ai.

Once things are shaped and common "scaling patterns" are well established, then for things like adding a front end (which is constantly changing, more views) then letting the autonomous approach run wild can *sometimes* be useful.

I have found that codex is better at remembering when I ask to not get carried away...whereas claude requires constant reminders.

I think there is another philosophy where the agent is domain specific. Not that we have to invent an entirely new universe for every product or business, but that there is a small amount of semi-customization involved to achieve an ideal agent.

I would much rather work with things like the Chat Completion API than any frameworks that compose over it. I want total control over how tool calling and error handling works. I've got concerns specific to my business/product/customer that couldn't possibly have been considered as part of these frameworks.

Whether or not a human needs to be tightly looped in could vary wildly depending on the specific part of the business you are dealing with. Having a purpose-built agent that understands where additional verification needs to occur (and not occur) can give you the best of both worlds.

This kind of sounds like both of them stepping into the other’s turf, to simplify a bit.

I haven’t used Codex but use Claude Code, and the way people (before today) described Codex to me was like how you’re describing Opus 4.6

So it sounds like they’re converging toward “both these approaches are useful at different times” potentially? And neither want people who prefer one way of working to be locked to the other’s model.

> With Opus 4.6, the emphasis is the opposite: a more autonomous, agentic, thoughtful system that plans deeply, runs longer, and asks less of the human.

This feels wrong, I can't comment on Codex, but Claude will prompt you and ask you before changing files, even when I run it in dangerous mode on Zed, I can still review all the diffs and undo them, or you know, tell it what to change. If you're worried about it making too many decisions, you can pre-prompt Claude Code (via .claude/instructions.md) and instruct it to always ask follow up questions regarding architectural decisions.

Sometimes I go out of my way to tell Claude DO NOT ASK ME FOR FOLLOW UPS JUST DO THE THING.

How can they be diverging, LLMs are built on similar foundations aka the Transformer architecture. Do you mean the training method (RLHF) is diverging?

> With Codex (5.3), the framing is an interactive collaborator: you steer it mid-execution, stay in the loop, course-correct as it works.

This is true, but I find that Codex thinks more than Opus. That's why 5.2 Codex was more reliable than Opus 4.5

Funny cause the situation was totally flipped last iteration.

Boing vs airbus philosophy

Just because you can inject steering doesn't mean they stered away from long running...

Theres hundreds of people who upload Codex 5.2 running for hours unattended and coming back with full commits

I read this exact comment with I would say completely the same words several times in X and I would bet my money it's LLM generated by someone who has not even tried both the tools. This AI slop even in the site like this without direct monetisation implications from fake engagement is making me sick...

I am definitely using Opus as an interactive collaborator that I steer mid-execution, stay in the loop and course correct as it works.

I mean Opus asks a lot if he should run things, and each time you can tell it to change. And if that's not enough you can always press esc to interrupt.

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