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Comment by someguyiguess | Hacker News Reader

Serious question: what is the secret to getting Codex to write decent code? I am on Windows. Maybe that is the issue, but I can't seem to get Codex to function anywhere near the level that I was previously able to get with even Claude Sonnet. Does Codex just not work well with Windows yet?

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I got the codex to write near perfect code with somewhat strict agents.md and coding standards(a separate .md file referenced from agents.md). My .md files have examples and a long list of do's and don'ts I accumulated over the last 6 months or so, totaling 300-400 lines. I plan every feature with it until I am satisfied with the general approach it wants to take, and then it oneshots it in 95% of cases. The planning takes anywhere from 5 to 30 minutes. The actual execution has gotten stupidly fast, most of the times it is faster than making a cup of coffee.

would you mind sharing your *.md files, for someone who is new at this?

"don't make any mistakes" /s

My .md files are specific to my domain - game development using Unity. Something that is probably universal and is a good baseline for every project and domain:

- which libraries to use for standard problems - project structure, it helps if it has a name(vertical slice etc) - which things llm is free to edit, which not - naming, comments etc

And most importantly: "what not to do", and you should do this a lot: Whenever llm does something that is a code smell, make it fix it and make it add a new rule to agents.md.

Have you tried using superpower skills?

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