I just installed this. I am very confused. I no longer have a Codex app on my computer. ChatGPT is now Codex.

But what happened to ChatGPT? Where am I supposed to casually chat?

Also, when you toggle btween ChatGPT Work and ChatGPT Codex, nothing changes. This is super confusing. Can someone from the OpenAI team clarify the difference btwn the modes? Does chatgpt work have more business-y related plugins turned on by default?

Edit: So it seems like the only place you can actually chat with chatgpt is in an awkward homeless nested window. idk. The chatgpt interface wasn't great (desperately needed artifacts), but I still used it a lot. I can't see this change going well with a lot of the casual users.

Edit2: In their awkward homeless nested chat mode, you cannot even edit past messages. this is a mess, why was the team so zealous to pull the switch on unification in this state? guessing there was internal pressure to juice codex's growth but, based on what im seeing, they did it by torching chatgpt?

[delayed]

I have a longer version of this, but in summary

So my understanding of the differences between chat, code and co-work; but may well be wrong!

Chat is the human, talking directly to the LLM - old school. Very basic can create docs etc - but saves in a temp folder. No real access to your local PC.

Cowork / work - Human talking to an agent, which can then use tools to do work. Also runs in a container, allowing it access to your drives/computer.

Claude Code / Codex - No longer in a container, full access to the computer, depending on what permissions you give. No longer locked in a container. + The agent is more focused on coding than cowork / work.

Anthropic just changed their web interface yesterday to have Chat versus Cowork as well, and every time I look at it, I'm so confused. I'm still so unclear when I'm supposed to use one or the other or the other.

Now the 'ChatGPT desktop app' (the Codex app, renamed) also has the split between work and code, and as far as I can tell, all it does is change which plugins are loaded by default to include Office ones when you put it in work mode. Perhaps it also changes the system prompt slightly?

I just clicked "Upgrade" in the macOS Codex Desktop app and it relaunched with a new name, "ChatGPT". My existing install of the macOS ChatGPT app seems to have been renamed "ChatGPT Classic".

I think these kind of semi-coding agents--but hosted--are the future for enterprises. Claude Tag, Claude Cowork, now Work by OAI.

Agents-on-your-machine clearly have their place, but for many workflows this is too unruly. Hence, the "long-running agent running on shared infra" pattern.

I think this is where the ball is headed. I'm building towards an open source version of this[0]. Still just working on the core, but hopefully soon self-hosted versions can be built on top.

[0] https://github.com/smartcomputer-ai/lightspeed

So, Claude Cowork for OpenAI? Feels overdue!

I've loved using Cowork recently for sourcing decisions. Things where seemingly everyone's out of stock or questionably reputable, just let Cowork spin for 20 minutes, find the best new and best used options that meet your requirements, probably also suggesting a different item that does the job and is available for cheap. I've done it enough that I'm starting to loathe clicking through these sites myself.

The resulting "combined" Codex + ChatGPT mac app is super confusing. I use the Codex app with my work account, but I liked the old ChatGPT app, which I kept logged in with my personal account, for my LLM chat needs. I guess I can just use ChatGPT.com, but this was a rather jarring change.

> With Codex technology built-in, ChatGPT can now move beyond answering questions to getting real work done across web, mobile, and desktop.

This looks like OpenAI catching up to Anthropic's Cowork.

I wonder why they haven’t simply continued to rebrand Codex as a general-purpose tool. ChatGPT Work is a convoluted name and continues the trend of having separate brands for separate things, what runs counter to OpenAI’s purported goal of unifying every workflow into a single “superapp”.

Worse still: what happens when your workflow involves both coding and general knowledge work? Are you expected to switch apps, or switch settings? To me, it sounds very confusing and inefficient, and not at all what I was expecting.

The toggle feels useless in the desktop app. It just changes a few shortcuts?!

Admittedly, I was already using Codex a bit like Claude Cowork. I'm just surprised they decided to merge threads.

Very interesting approach, however I wonder if the combination of Codex + Work in the same app makes sense? I could see a world where the technical needs of a developer are hampered by the overall superapp architecture. I guess we'll see?

So I've now lost all my ChatGPT chats? Or did they hide them? I see some of them, but the history is inaccessible??

Edit: I found them back in the 'classic' version of the app. Wildly confusing what is going to happen to the data there, chats, projects, custom GPT's.

This is going to be fun tomorrow when everyone at the company I work at finds out all their chats, projects and GPT’s are ‘gone’ after they ‘update’. And not a word about this switcheroo ‘data loss’ in their comms. Wow.

That graph of internal adoption rate is laughable. Their KPIs and work requirements probably heavily skewed the curve.

All models I’ve used have been exceptionally bad at creating a high level business oriented vision and strategy from various inputs. The output just feels like it can’t see past the next word, or render distance, misses the big picture and anything not specified in prompt or input context

Can it replace my manager?

Codex just started downloading an update and it's gone. It removed itself.

I guess it's supposed to be a part of ChatGPT now, but I cannot see any update there yet.

btw I kinda hate this, because ChatGPT was always very slow for me - possibly due to amount of historical threads I have there

I wish OpenAI had a family plan. I would love to pay and have my wife and kids use ChatGPT on a single subscription.

How is this different than Codex?

I sure hope it does!

It'd be super nice if tech companies stopped just building the same product and gave us concretely different ideas.

who cares?

Am I the only one who thinks this landing page is garbage? Funkily it feels like a long wall of slop. I guess you shouldn’t get high on your own supply.

Yeah... No.

I can get some useful results from codex at work, because I have to, except for when I don't. I accept that risk factor and compensate by reviewing _everything_ it spits out.

But we all know what coding is, in a very broad stroke manner, sure.

What does an end of month report mean? I automatically increase the font size when I send the spreadsheet to Paul. I review tickets and provide a meta write-up on Friday. Or maybe Monday, because Fred didn't get back to me until 5:30 Friday, and I closed my laptop at 4.

These are just little things, and they're repetitive, but each time, there's some little idiosyncracy. I have reservations regarding any piece of software being able to finesse that.

OpenAI clearly failed to consult ChatGPT for branding advice.