GoKawiilAt the start of May, OpenAI released a playful feature inside its Codex desktop app for creating a virtual pet.
This silly little addition solved my biggest challenge with Codex: what should I do with it? My first real task with Codex was putting together a virtual Lil Finder Guy for fun.
A month later, I’m using two Mac apps that Codex built at my direction. Toying around with Codex Pets was the gateway for me to better understand its capabilities.
Both Mac apps are just for my use and not intended for distribution, but that’s just a choice and not a Codex limitation. They’re genuinely usable and useful software applications that serve my needs.
One tool is called Flow, and it just helps me track activity and changes around the App Store. Another offers a better experience with using a social network on the Mac without certain constraints of Chrome, like minimum window width.
The experience taught me just how much these tools have changed since this time last year as well.
For example, I wanted to make my own Launchpad replacement when macOS Tahoe removed the feature from the Mac last June. (Launchpad wasn’t for everyone, but it was part of my muscle memory since OS X Lion. I’ve since moved on from missing it.)
Using ChatGPT to walk me through Xcode while copying and pasting blocks of code and screenshots of errors was a process void of much joy. Even as a proof-of-concept, I couldn’t get the app that I was making to resemble the behavior that I had in mind. Nuking the project felt good.
With Codex, I had a functioning app that solved my specific need in almost no time (and literally no Xcode). I was able to go from idea to minimum viable software almost immediately. The rest of my first month with Codex and making the app was spent adding features beyond my original need and getting more specific about how things should look and behave.
There are more tools that I want to make for myself next, and having Codex’s capabilities on the Mac has been a real boost.
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