Hacker News Reader

Comment by simonw | Hacker News Reader

I just updated the article to link to this site: https://codex-tool-reference.simonw.chatgpt.site/

Which I created using this prompt in a fresh Work session:

> Build a site that lists every one of your tools - nearly grouped into categories - and for each one explain what it does. Try to exactly duplicate arguments and tool descriptions where possible. Design aesthetic should be technical docs, minimal flare

UPDATE: I had it add all of the available skills too. This solved a mystery: I didn't see a tool for controlling the headless browser. It turns out that's handled by a skill that tells is how to run the browser via its Node.js REPL tool: https://codex-tool-reference.simonw.chatgpt.site/skills/cont...

View on HN

Chat GPT work is running a full bash environment with python.

You can get it to run scripts direct from the prompt.

Try...

Run the script below in your sandbox

message="I'm running in a bash sandbox"

printf '< %s >\n' "$message" printf ' \ ^__^\n' printf ' \ (oo)\_______\n' printf ' (__)\ )\/\\\n' printf ' ||----w |\n\n'

printf 'User: '; whoami printf 'Host: '; hostname printf 'System: '; uname printf 'Folder: '; pwd printf '\nWorkspace:\n' tree

I have some more examples here -> https://bionic-gpt.com/architect-course/ai-computer/sandboxe...

Wow. For what it's worth, I ran that prompt in Codex mode in ChatGPT Desktop (sans-site artifact), and I ended up with the below. This is on a default setup, win10.

- *9 top-level orchestration tools*: the `functions.` and `collaboration.` calls available directly to the model. - *83 operations inside `functions.exec`*: these appear on its global `tools` object. - *92 callable tools/operations total* under that counting method. - *10 execution helpers* inside `functions.exec` documented separately at the end. They are helper functions, not independent tool calls.

Honest question: why would I ever visit that site? It's just an insane amount of text. Not written or curated by you. Any need for me for this data would be fulfilled by just asking the agent myself, and with pointed questions it could float better what I need than this vomit of data?

I visited it and read it. It's useful to know what the actual feature set is out of the box.

Because some people don’t have their own ChatGPT subscription to plug such a query into?

It's effectively the source code for ChatGPT Work. If you don't want to see that, don't visit it.

The non-vomit version of it is my (entirely human written) OP: https://simonwillison.net/2026/Aug/30/understanding-chatgpt-...

To see how these things work under the hood so that we can enhance our own personal innovation.

The same reason that one would want to know how an LLM works or what the Win32 API looks like.

Either to make better use of a tool, to build our own tools that follow design patterns we learn when we look at the work done by others, or even to learn what not to do.

Those are just some of the numerous reasons a person might be interested to peek under the hood.

If anything, I'd guess OpenAI is going to clamp down this transparency in the future.

So this may end up being a final rare glimpse into how a tool like this works for those of us who want to understand how the sausage is made and learn from it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com