OpenAI has introduced Codex, a desktop application for Macs that lets users run several AI agents simultaneously, making it suitable for much more complex tasks than ChatGPT alone.
A software agent rather than a chat tool, Codex is particularly valuable to software developers who could use the service’s support for multiple AI agents to edit code, build simple apps, manage projects or run complex automations and workflows. Agents can run for up to 30 minutes independently before returning completed code.
“I built an app with Codex last week,” wrote OpenAI co-founder Sam Altman. “Then I started asking it for ideas for new features and at least a couple of them were better than I was thinking of.”
OpenAI shared one project in which Codex built a racing game from one prompt. It then began iterating on the original design, identifying and adding missing features, fixing bugs, and more.
AI wants to make your code
Agentic tools for coding seem to be the emerging challenger field in AI. Anthropic’s Claude Code has been generating a lot of interest in the last few weeks. Github’s Copilot is already in daily use across the developer community; Google has Jules; Amazon offers Q; there’s, of course, Microsoft CoPilot; and there are many other developer-focused AI solutions, making this a hotly-contested space.
OpenAI evidently hopes it can turn its current media buzz into a hook to bring developers aboard its own new offering.
To mark the launch and encourage use, the company has doubled all rate limits for paid plans for two months. When it comes to desktop app releases, the company tends to target the Mac because the platform has a huge and active concentration of developers, making it a good place to build new kingdoms. (It plans to introduce Windows and Linux support in the future.) Already, OpenAI claims Codex has been used by more than 1 million developers.
Some features Codex provides
The Mac app gives users the ability to edit code, run workflows and to support agentic tasks through a ChatGPT-like simple UI. Agents are organized within separate threads and projects, which means you can move between tasks and have work running while you do something else; as the project status changes, you’ll see notes in the interface.
You can also deploy a large assortment of pre-programmed “skills” and automations, which let you use Codex to do specific tasks. The introduction of a Mac app means Codex is able to access native app features and workflows that aren’t always easily available from within a browser.
That’s not to say OpenAI has knocked the ball out the park with this beast, at least at this stage; initial Reddit feedback suggests several drawbacks, including speed, coding errors, poor quality output, the introduction of bugs and a lack of contextual understanding of intent in contrast to Claude. There have also been claims that Codex makes heavy use of background processes, which slows performance of the host Mac. And there continue to be concerns around security of both the app itself and the software it creates.
Facing serious competition, OpenAI will need to respond to those challenges if the company truly wants Codex to become the best available coding agent.
What’s this for Mac users?
The most important potential is for developers who use Codex to supplement their work in Apple’s Xcode, particularly because Xcode isn’t particularly good at serving as a high-level agent command center to manage background tasks. The move also positions Codex as a robust coding companion, putting Apple Intelligence and the future Google Gemini partnership under some pressure.
OpenAI clearly also hopes to challenge Apple’s developer environment, as evidenced by Codex and by the company’s recent acquisition of Alex Codes, a third-party tool that added AI features to Xcode. Apple, however, already lets developers connect their Anthropic Claude account to Xcode to access AI-driven coding tools, and will no doubt supplement that arrangement with Gemini-based coding features eventually.
Meanwhile, Apple continues to work on Apple Intelligence. And while it is cooperating with OpenAI for now, there is little commitment and we can all see that there will be a competitive conflict point as Apple’s former designer Jony Ive’s all-new OpenAI product edges slowly into being.
You can follow me on social media! Join me on BlueSky, LinkedIn, and Mastodon.