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Comment by written-beyond | Hacker News Reader

Has anyone seriously used codex cli? I was using LLMs for code gen usually through the vscode codex extension, Gemini cli and Claude Code cli. The performance of all 3 of them is utter dog shit, Gemini cli just randomly breaks and starts spamming content trying to reorient itself after a while.

However, I decided to try codex cli after hearing they rebuilt it from the ground up and used rust(instead of JS, not implying Rust==better). It's performance is quite literally insane, its UX is completely seamless. They even added small nice to haves like ctrl+left/right to skip your cursor to word boundaries.

If you haven't I genuinely think you should give it a try you'll be very surprised. Saw Theo(yc ping labs) talk about how open ai shouldn't have wasted their time optimizing the cli and made a better model or something. I highly disagree after using it.

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I found codex cli to be significantly better than claude code. It follows instructions and executes the exact change I want without going off on an "adventure" like Claude code. Also the 20 dollars per month sub tier gives very generous limits of the most powerful model option (5.2 codex high).

I work on SSL bio acoustic models as context.

codex the model (not the cli) is the big thing here. I've used it in CC and w/ my claude setup, it can handle things Opus could never. it's really a secret weapon not a lot of people talk about. I'm not even using xhigh most of the time.

When you say CC is it Codex CLI or Claude Code?

claude code

If I understand correctly, you're using CC with an OpenAI API key, right?

CC doesn't support it natively, so I'm assuming is some sort of mod, and it still outclasses Opus? That's interesting.

Do you mind sharing what tool/mod you are using?

No, the codex harness is also optimized for the codex models. Highly recommend using first-party OpenAI harnesses for codex.

I used that too, but CC currently has features like hooks that codex team has refused to add far too many times.

FYI there are forks that add it

Hmm, this seems promising?

https://github.com/openai/codex/pull/9796

OpenAI does not merge feature PRs. But you could try it out in a fork.

Thanks. I didn't know they didn't merge those.

What’s the point of having a public GitHub repo with PRs enabled if they will never merge any of them?

They merge bugfixes and documentation and they allow discussion in employee PRs

Yo, mind explaining your setup in a bit more detail? I agree completely - I like the Claude Code harness, but think Codex (the model) is significantly better as a coding model.

I'm struggling with landing in a good way to use them together. If you have a way you like, I'd love to hear it.

hey I’m just spinning up in ssl birdsong models (BirdMAE, SongMAE, etc) can you share any resources? My email is stevens.994@osu.edu, would love to read your work.

dude you are spinning up my models! Emailing you!

OpenCode also has an extremely fast and reliable UI compared to the other CLIs. I’ve been using Codex more lately since I’m cancelling my Claude Pro plan and it’s solid but haven’t spent nearly as much time compared to Claude Code or Gemini CLI yet.

But tbh OpenAI openly supporting OpenCode is the bigger draw for me on the plan but do want to spend more time with native Codex as a base of comparison against OpenCode when using the same model.

I’m just happy to have so many competitive options, for now at least.

Seconded. I find codex lacks only two things:

- hooks (this is a big one)

- better UI to show me what changes are going to be made.

the second one makes a huge diff and it's the main reason I stopped using opencode (lots of other reasons too). in CC, I am shown a nice diff that I can approve/reject. in codex, the AI makes lots of changes but doesn't pin point what changes it's doing or going to make.

Yeah it's really weird with automatically making changes. I read in it's chain of thought that it's going to request approval for something from the user, the next message was approval granted doing it. Very weird...

You can't see diffs in git?

How you using hooks?

That’s a separate tool though. You don’t want to have to open another terminal to git diff every 30 seconds and then give feedback. Much better UX when it’s inline.

My main hooks are desktop notifications when Claude requires input or finishes a task. So I can go do other things while it churns and know immediately when it needs me.

I think Codex is probably marginally stronger than Opus in my testing.

But it's much much worse at writing issues than Claude models.

I strongly agree. The memory and cpu usage of codex-cli is also extremely good. That codex-cli is open source is also valuable because you can easily get definitive answers to any questions about its behavior.

I also was annoyed by Theo saying that.

It's pretty good, yeah. I get coherent results >95% of the time (on well-known problems).

However, it seems to really only be good at coding tasks. Anything even slightly out of the ordinary, like planning dialogue and plot lines it almost immediately starts producing garbage.

I did get it stuck in a loop the other day. I half-assed a git rebase and asked codex to fix it. It did eventually resolve all debased commits, but it just kept going. I don't really know what it was doing, I think it made up some directive after the rebase completed and it just kept chugging until I pulled the plug.

The only other tool I've tried is Aider, which I have found to be nearly worthless garbage

The problem with codex right now is it doesn't have hook support. It's hard to understate how big of a deal hooks are, the Ralph loop that the newer folks are losing their shit over is like the level 0, most rudimentary use of hooks.

I have a tool that reduces agent token consumption by 30%, and it's only viable because I can hook the harness and catch agents being stupid, then prompt them to be smarter on the fly. More at https://sibylline.dev/articles/2026-01-22-scribe-swebench-be...

Same goes for Claude Code. Literally has vim bindings for editing prompts if you want them.

CC is the clunkiest PoS software I've ever used in terminal; feels like it was vibe coded and anthroshit doesn't give a shit

All of these agentic UIs are vibe coded. They advertise the percent of AI written code in the tool.

which begs the question: which came first—agentic AI tools or the AI that vibe coded them?

…the AI…

Codex has Ctrl-G to start an $EDITOR of your choice, FWIW.

Codex’s only caveat is too slow.

This is the biggest UX killer，unfortunately

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