[written-beyond]

Just use Codex 5.3 in codex cli, the $20/mo plan is basically limitless at least for me and I keep reasoning efforts high.

You can enjoy it while it lasts, OpenAI is being very liberal with their limits because of CC eating their lunch rn.

[rmonvfer]

Yeah, I can’t recommend gpt-5.3-codex enough, it’s great! I’ve been using it with the new macOS app and I’m impressed. I’ve always been a Claude Code guy and I find myself using codex more and more. Opus is still much nicer explaining issues and walking me through implementations but codex is faster (even with xhigh effort) and gets the job done 95% of the time.

I was spending unholy amounts of money and tokens (subsidized cloud credits tho) forcing Opus for everything but I’m very happy with this new setup. I’ve also experimented with OpenCode and their Zen subscription to test Kimi K2.5 an similar models and they also seem like a very good alternative for some tasks.

What I cannot stand tho is using sonnet directly (it’s fine as a subagent), I’ve found it to be hard to control and doesn’t follow detailed instructions.

[jorl17]

Out of curiosity, what’s your flow? Do you have codex write plans to markdown files? Just chat? What languages or frameworks do you use?

I’m an avid cursor user (with opus), and have been trying alternatives recently. Codex has been an immense letdown. I think I was too spoiled by cursor’s UX and internal planning prompt.

It’s incredibly slow, produces terribly verbose and over-complicated code (unless I use high or xhigh, which are even slower), and missed a lot of details. Python/django and react frontend.

For the first time I felt like I could relate to those people who say it doesn’t make them faster,” because they have to keep fixing the agent’s shot, never felt that with opus 4.5 and 4.6 and cursor

[written-beyond]

Codex cli is a very performant cli though, better than any other cli code assistant I've used.

I mean does it matter what code it's producing? If it renders and functions just use it. I think it's better to take the L on verbose code and optimizing the really ugly bits by hand in a few minutes than be kneecapped every 5 hour by limits and constant pleas to shift to Sonnet.

[drsalt]

you've always been a Claude Code guy? this has existed less than a year.

[redanddead]

I was born clutching a Claude Code shell, you peasant.

The first sentence out of my mouth was a system prompt

[rl3]

To be fair that still feels like an eternity somehow.

Perhaps AI time is the inverse of Valve time.

[dagss]

Thanks a lot, after today I have fully switched to Codex I think.

This vscode extension makes it almost as easy to point codex to something as when doing it in cursor:

https://github.com/suzukenz/vscode-copy-selection-with-line-...

[baq]

+1, codex 5.2 was really good and 5.3 seems to be better at everything; caveat - I had little time to test it.