Everyday AI Podcast – An AI and ChatGPT Podcast - Ep 711: Coding with OpenAI’s New Codex App: How to Build a Simple App without coding experience

Episode Date: February 11, 2026

You can develop a working Mac app in minutes. 😱For free. No coding experience needed. In the course of one week, OpenAI dropped three big pieces of related news and updates: their new Codex Mac app, a new GPT-5.3 codex model, and the fact it will remain open to free users. Sheesh. Even if you have zero interest in coding long term, you can start easily building software to help you work better today. Join us as we put AI to Work on Wednesdays. Coding with OpenAI’s New Codex App: How to Build a Simple App without coding experience -- An Everyday AI Chat Jordan WilsonNewsletter: Sign up for our free daily newsletterMore on this Episode: Episode PageJoin the discussion on LinkedIn: Thoughts on this? Join the convo on LinkedIn and connect with other AI leaders.Upcoming Episodes: Check out the upcoming Everyday AI Livestream lineupWebsite: YourEverydayAI.comEmail The Show: [e-mail] with Jordan on LinkedInTopics Covered in This Episode:OpenAI Codex App Desktop LaunchGPT-5.3 Codex Model Coding DemoBuilding Mac Apps Without Coding ExperienceCodex Prompt Engineering Best PracticesHandling Errors and Iterations in CodexCodex Skills, Automations, and App FeaturesCreating Local Database and Project FilesAdding Kanban View to Codex AppsCodex Integration with Xcode for MacCross-Platform and Web App Build OptionsTimestamps:00:00 "AI Enables Free Software Creation"04:38 "Build a Custom Mac App"08:00 "AI Learning Hub Challenges"09:57 Codex Permissions and Risks13:12 "Creating iPhone Apps with Xcode"18:48 "Codex Projects and Updates"21:11 "Local App or Full Web App?"24:49 "Xcode Build and Cache Tips"27:21 "Clear Cache for Clean Build"29:41 "Understanding GPT-5.3 Codex Updates"33:49 "Kanban Tools Made Simple"38:01 "OpenAI Keeps Free CodeX Tier"39:36 "Everyday AI: Subscribe & Explore"Keywords: OpenAI Codex, codex app, coding with openAI, GPT-5.3 Codex, desktop coding model, Mac app development, simple app without coding, no coding experience required, natural language coding, build software for free, agentic work, automations, skills support, Xcode integration, Swift programming, project file, local machine, database setup, native Apple app, loSend Everyday AI and Jordan a text message. (We can't reply back unless you leave contact info) Start Here ▶️Not sure where to start when it comes to AI? Start with our Start Here Series. You can listen to the first drop -- Episode 691 -- or get free access to our Inner Cricle community and all episodes: StartHereSeries.com Also, here's a link to the entire series on a Spotify playlist. 

This is the Everyday AI Show, the everyday podcast where we simplify AI and bring its power to your fingertips. Listen daily for practical advice to boost your career, business, and everyday life. Meet Firefly AI Assistant, now live in Adobe Firefly, the All In One Creative AI Studio. Just describe what you want to create and the assistant handles the rest, orchestrating multi-step workflows across Photoshop, Premiere Express, and more in one conversational interface. You direct the outcome. The assistant accelerates execution. Hundreds of millions of people can now create fully fledged working software for free

without really knowing how to do any of it. And I'm not talking about just some templated cookie cutter, you know, apps with bare bones capabilities. No, I'm talking like a fully fledged piece of software that you can, you know, run to help you personally, to help your company and just using natural language. So I'm going to be teaching you that on today's show during our putting AI to work on Wednesday series and keeping it as beginner friendly as possible. So how can hundreds of millions of people do this now for free?

Well, that's because a few things have happened in the past seven days. OpenAI released the new Codex. app, which is what we're going to be diving into. And that's their new desktop version of their coding model that was previously cloud only. Then OpenAI released the most powerful coding model in the world to go along with it called GPT53 codex. And to top it all off, OpenAI CEO Sam Olman announced earlier this week that they're going to keep a free tier available for codex, which is pretty bonkers. So stick with me for the next 25-ish minutes and we'll not only create a working desktop app live, but I'll show you how each step of the way and hopefully break down any of the technical barriers and explain it all in real time.

What could go wrong? I don't know. Let's find out. Welcome to Everyday AI. If you're new here, my name's Jordan Wilson and, well, this thing's for you. It is an unedited, unscripted, live stream podcasts, helping everyday business leaders like you and me, not just keep up with AI, but how we can make sense of all the new happenings, all the new AI updates, know what's good, what's not, and use that information to grow our companies

and our career. So it starts here with the uned, unscripted, live stream podcast, but to take it to the next level, make sure you go to our website at your everyday AI.com. There, we're going to be recapping the highlights from today's show as well as keeping you up to date with all the other AI news that you need to know. So let's talk about coding. with the Codex app and how you can build a simple app without any coding experience required. So this is one of those. Yeah, technically it's going to be a more visual show. So you might want to go to our website and catch the video version of that.

It's all available for free on our website. But if you are podcasts only, right, you're one of those purists. I don't do the videos. That's fine. I'm going to still try my best to explain everything that's going to be happening on my screen. On most Wednesdays, we do this kind of new-ish series called Putting AI to Work on Wednesdays. It's kind of a practical and tactical midweek break where we can go hands-on, do some live demos, and learn about some of these new AI updates.

So that's exactly what we're going to be doing today. And I'm going to do one of those things where I'm going to start right now because we're going to do this thing literally live. There's a good chance it could break, but who knows, maybe it'll work. So I am now sharing on my screen and live stream audience. If you could let me know. All right. So we hopefully should have the Codex app here. So like I said, this is new from OpenAI.

It has been out for about almost a week now. So I'm going to go ahead. I'm going to paste in a fairly long prompt. All right. Now I'm going to explain everything else that's going on here. So a couple of things. And as this cooks, all right, I'm going to share something else on my screen, just some slides to help explain everything else a little bit more.

But let me start here. I'm not going to be able to explain every aspect of codex in a hopefully short-ish podcast. It would take a couple of hours because it is very powerful. There's skills. There's automations. It's extremely customizable, right? I'm just going to show you how you can create a working app with hopefully no iterations and something that you can use for yourself.

So on today's show, I'm going to be showing you I run on a Mac. So I'm going to be showing you how to create an actual working Mac app, right? It's going to have a desktop icon when I go in and if I work with this app, right, and enter things in there, it's going to have a way to locally store all that. So it's not like I'm going to lose it, right? I've done plenty of other kind of vibe coding demos over the years, right? But most of those, they're either using something like, you know, chat ChpT Canvas or Google Gemini Canvas or, you know, maybe just creating something on a local host, right, something that just pops open in a web browser.

But as soon as you close it out, it's gone. That's not what we're doing here, right? Think of, I don't know, a piece of desktop software that you use or, you know, a SaaS, right? Any SaaS product, right? When you make changes, it obviously saves it. Right. So the only difference here is we're not going to do anything on the off side. Right.

So no, you know, login, password, you know, nothing like that because I want to keep this as non-technical as possible and hopefully give you some ideas. So as we go through here and yes, we are kind of cooking live and I'm going to explain this a little bit. I want you to think what is maybe. Maybe there's, I don't know, three. or four pieces of software that you use and you're like, wouldn't it be easier if, you know,

these were all one, maybe, right? Or maybe you use, uh, I don't know, a complex or expensive CRM and you're like, I only lose, use 10% of this, right? Why is my company paying for the other, you know, 80%? Right. I'm not saying that you should be, you know, rewriting your company's CRM. That's not what I'm saying.

I'm just giving an example, uh, right? I remember like 10 or 15 years ago, uh, you know, no, it was, actually probably like eight years ago, helping a marketing client. They were on pipe drive, the CRM. And they just needed the most basic information. They needed a Canvan board, right? Probably could have built it, right? With what we have now, we literally could have built it in a couple of minutes.

So think of it like that. Think of, you know, what is a piece of software or an app that doesn't exist right now that can make your life easier, that could make your work better? Or like I said, maybe there is some software that, you are already using that's too clunky. And you sometimes see like see yourself using more time finagling it, duct taping it, you know, working through bugs that it's actually worth, right? Can you build something simple to replace some of that functionality? Well, maybe. All right. So that's what we're going to be trying to go through in codex. And then like I said, I'm not going to be able to show you

everything because it is very full feature. But how I'm using it now, I'm using it. I'm using it on my local machine. So a couple of things to note, I did just paste in a huge prompt. All right. Don't worry about that. Actually, the majority of this prompt and what I'm using this for, all right, we have our new start here series. So if you've been listening to the podcast at all, it's a hopefully helpful, I don't know, live stream audiences have been helpful for you guys. It's kind of a place that anyone can go if they're brand new to AI or if they're just looking to double down their knowledge is a series of kind of starter podcast to learn about the basics, you know, explain different concepts, different strategies, et cetera.

So one thing I've been struggling with is, well, I obviously have this organized in a chat GPT project, in a Claude project, and in a Gemini project, right, which in and of itself, kind of helpful, kind of not to have it in three different projects. But that's not what I actually need it for. One thing that I'm always not wanting to do is just look at big walls of text. So I obviously use different modes in those three different large language models to plan the shows. But then when I'm done, I don't really do anything with them. And I kind of wish that I had a simple, easy, visual piece of software.

So I can even remember, oh, what did we cover in volume four? Right? I forgot. And then all of a sudden, I got to open up the website. I go. I get distracted. Oh, I got to go fix this, right? Whatever.

So is it helpful to have this in a project? Yes. But then I need something more, right? I need a tool that I can look and understand and make sure that, you know, it's not being too repetitive and all these other things. So I could go out there and try to find the right piece of software. I'm sure something like that exists. Or I can just give a prompt and explain every single thing to Open AI's code.

And that's what I did here. And that's what I'm showing on my screen. and the reason why it looks so incredibly long is I have 35 different ideas for the next iterations of the start here series. Yeah, I did a ton of research, right? And I'm always constantly depending on what's going on this week, next week, I'm always looking at those ideas and saying, okay, what's still the most relevant? And what do I feel will continue to be relevant in six months? And that changes all the time. So I need something that I can kind of finagle that I can visually see and hopefully organized.

So if it looks like I have the world's longest prompt in Codex, the majority of it is just the content of those 35 different episodes. So I did give Codex full access and full permission to my computer. All right. So if you're on a word computer, you might not want to do that, right? Unless you're the CEO or if you have permission to, because what this means is Codex can read anything on my computer and it can write anything on my computer or overwrite anything on my computer.

So you do need to understand the basics and, you know, kind of quote-unquote potential risks there. All right. So that's what's happening here. So the other kind of piece of software that you have to understand that we're going to be doing jumping into right after this. And yeah, this is confusing because it's technically the same letters just in a little bit in reverse. So we're working with the Mac app for Open AIs.

Codex. Again, even free. If you have, right, if you have a free chat GPT account, you can go and use this. I'm using the GPT 53 codex model, but there's other models that you can use. There's specific codex models that are kind of fine-tuned for coding or you can just use other models like, you know, GPT 5-2. I think that's actually the only non-codex model, right? But the limits are going to vary depending on if you are on a free plan, a paid plan, or one of the higher tier plans. And then there's different kind of levels as well. So right now I'm using GPT53 Codex high, which is the newest model on essentially one of the highest settings. So like I said, this is codex, but I'm also going to be using X code. All right.

So if you are non-technical, don't worry. I'm technically not even that technical. All right. So Xcode is an Apple app that you can use to essentially build apps. So what's happening? And you don't even have to tell Codex this. As long as you say something, right? Remember when I told you at the beginning of the show, imagine something that you need to build that would make your life easier? As long as you say, hey, I want this to be a Mac app that I run in my browser and it's going to save all or sorry, not my browser, a Mac app that runs on my desktop and saves all the information. It's going to write it hopefully in the correct language. It probably will because Codex is really good about that. Right.

But essentially, it's going to write it in a language called Swift. Okay. And in doing that, ultimately, it's going to, at the end, create a project file that I'm going to click on. And it's going to open that in X code. And all X code, really, all I use it for anyways, again, I'm not that technical. And I know you can actually just do all of this in X code because X code integrates directly. with Codex, but for me, right, I want to get more experienced natively in this platform. There is all these automations.

You know, there's skill support. There's all of these other, you know, apps. There's all these other things that I want to take advantage of in Codex. So I know you can do this all in the Xcode platform, but all I'm going to be using Xcode for. And if you want to follow along with me is to essentially publish the app, right? You can do that for free on Xcode. A lot of people don't know because it is a developer platform. You know, and if you want to publish this to the app store as an example,

I think you have to pay like $100 a year or something like that. But if you want to create an iPhone app, you can do it this way, this exact way I'm showing you. If you want to create something, you know, with a database, with authorization, right, that people log into and can sync across devices. You can do that obviously here with codex and X code, right? So there's a lot of different things. that you can do. I'm going to get to them later, but all I'm doing is I'm using codex. It's going to write my app that I just described in natural language in Swift,

which is a coding language. It's going to give me a project when it's done that I'm going to open in X code. And then hopefully if it all works, right, it's essentially going to build this. It's going to take a minute and then I'm going to launch it on my desktop. All right. So as that continues to cook, I'm going to go ahead, hopefully, here and share some slides, right? We're going to get quickly into the details. And I did use my, my trusty Google Gemini Canvas mode for this one. All right. And I'm going to keep my eye. I'm going to keep my eye here. Oh, look at that. It is already done. All right. So I'm going to go through kind of my slides here quickly in case there are any bucks. So let's talk a little bit about

the Codex app, what it is and how it works. So, We already went through availability and pricing. So right now, the app is only available for Mac, although they will be, Open AI will be releasing a Windows version soon. But if you are a Windows user, you can obviously use the Codex app on the web. There's obviously some downsides to using it on the web. There's pros as well, right? Especially if you use different multiple computers.

But the key purpose is to let, well, developers, and everyday people easily direct, supervise, and collaborate with agents for both, coding and broader knowledge work. Here's the other thing. And just about the word codex. Yes, today's show, because you all voted, right, in our newsletter on Monday, I said, hey, what do you want to learn about? Give you five or six different options.

You said, I want to use codex to learn how to code, right? But you can actually use codex for a lot of non-coding work as well, right? The new model, GBT53 codex, which is only available in the codex app. Yes, I know we're getting. a little granular here. But it's actually really good at creating spreadsheets, PowerPoint, all kind of, you know, non-coding day-to-day work. So keep that in mind, right?

And I don't think we'll see, but I don't think that OpenAI is going to make the Codex models available in chat GPT. So for now, it is kind of two separate product lines. And, you know, like I talked about on Monday's show, Open AI kind of really stuck their flag down on this Codex, you know, Island here. You know, their Super Bowl commercial was Codex. It wasn't about ChatTBT, BTT, right? Which is pretty big for OpenAI to really invest this heavily into technically a separate

platform in Codex. So let's talk about some of the essentials. So this is just a command center. So yes, both for agentic work, but also running agents in parallel. Also, there's work tree support. So you can have isolated code copies to prevent conflicts during kind of exploration. And it is integrated fully. So you can think of like a command line interface versus an IDE.

So this is actually nice. If you have always wanted to get into more serious vibe coding, right, something a little more than, you know, oh, creating something in Google Gemini Canvas mode, right? If you want to get to something more than that, But you look at command line tools and you're like, nope, not for me, not a terminal person, right? The earlier versions of Claudecode, right?

If you want an actual IDE, this is it, right? This is what Codex is for to be able to give you that kind of graphical user interface to take advantage of what a command line tool, coding tool would give you. But that's a little easier, drag and drop, right? Easy click buttons, easy explanations. Adobe just introduced an entirely new way to create. bringing the power and precision of its creative suite into one conversational experience. Meet Firefly AI Assistant, now live in the Adobe Firefly app, the All In One Creative

AI Studio. Powered by Adobe's creative agent, Firefly AI Assistant lets you start with your vision, just describe what you want, and shape the outcome as it takes form with the Assistant. The Assistant orchestrates multi-step workflows, drawing on 60-plus pro-grade tools across Adobe Creative Cloud apps, including Photoshop, illustration. premiere, Lightroom Express, and more to help bring your ideas to life. You can also get started with creative skills, a growing library of pre-built workflows for common creative tasks, like batch editing photos, creating mood boards, portrait retouching,

and creating social variations. Every step the assistant takes is visible so you can refine, redirect, or take over at any time. You stay in the driver's seat as the creative director. Adobe Firefly AI assistant now in public. beta. See it today at firefly.adobie.com. So a couple things that make Codex a little different and unique. It does have skills. So in the same way that, you know, well, Anthropic kind of created skills, right?

Well, Codex supports them by default. Unfortunately, ChadGBT doesn't yet, but Codex does. There's also automations in apps, which are really cool. And then there's also, you know, two different personalities in Codex, Essentially, you can toggle between, you know, a pragmatic version or a friendlier version. Security. So it does have an open source system level sandboxing. And right now, agents are restricted to their working directory and need permissions for elevated commands.

So that's why I told you when I'm doing this, I'm giving it access to my full system, right? Because I kind of know what I'm doing. But for the most part, it's right, my business, my company on this machine, I don't have any you know, real sensitive data or information. I also did get a newer computer, so, you know, it's pretty empty. Also, roadmap, like I talked about for Codex, the Windows version is coming soon. Open AI did say that they're going to have improvements to multi-agent workflows and faster inference and expanded automation triggers.

So there's a lot of different ways that you can build apps in Codex. I gave you my example of what I'm trying to do. I want to create a dedicated Mac app. And actually, y'all, I've been tinkering with Codex since it came out. And I think I'm creating an amazing piece of software that I don't know what I'm going to do with it. But it's something I've wanted for like 15 years that's never existed. And I've been like, you know, as I'm working, I always have Codex going in the background. And I'm just kind of working on this project.

So it's a secret little project. Maybe, uh, maybe I'll, I'll tell. our inner circle community what I'm working on. So yeah, if you're listening to this and you are in the inner circle community, go make a couple posts on that. We'll see if we get enough momentum to talk about the secret project that I've been working on for a while. So here's the different ways that you can build apps in codex.

So if you're not a technical person, here's the different ways. So number one is you can just create a like a local host, right, or technically two different ways. So you can just create a local, HTML, HTML file. Right. So for that, all you need is the web browser, text editor. You can create a local host web app, right? I've done that before on the show here, multiple times, a lot of vibe coding,

you know, simple vibe coding platforms allow you to do that as well. Right. So you can write in different languages. And then it essentially just launches in, you know, Chrome or whatever browser you use. But it doesn't save anything, right, in the long term, because it's just cookies based. Right. So if you clear your cookies or if something happens, with your browser. It's like, okay, all that momentum's gone.

Right. There's no database. You're not logging in, et cetera. Then you can go different, right? There's so many different things that you can build. You can create full-blown websites, right? So you can create landing pages, but then you can use and push this to tools like GitHub, right? Or you can, you know, work with different tools, Cloudflare pages, Netlify, etc. Obviously, in codecs, there's directing integration with GitHub. You can build a full-blown web app, right?

It's not what I'm building. In this case, I'm building something for myself, something I want to run on my local machine, but you can build a full-blown web app. So if you need to build something with login, saving user data, dashboards, et cetera, but then you might need to use some tools like Vercel, render, fly.io, et cetera, because at that point, you would require a back-end and a database. then you can build a serverless app as an example using like aWS lambda cloud fair workers and that's great for small API endpoints in webbooks and then you can do what I'm doing

which is just a native Apple app right a Mac app and for that we're using the combination like I told you of X code and it's writing it in Swift and that's best for well high performance Mac or iOS apps and then last but not least you can create a desktop web app. All right. So there's, and that's more for if you want to create an app that's cross platform. All right. So like I said, a lot of different ways to do this.

So do you need a database for all these things? Well, yes and no. So in my instance, when I'm creating a desktop version, it's going to create a database that essentially lives on my machine. There's no authorization. So I'm not logging in and out with a password or anything like that. So some of these different options, it will require a database. some of them, depending on what you want to do.

You might require authentication. But again, for my simple version, all I'm doing is creating a native Mac app, and it's going to run it locally on my machine. So here's some simple best practices for using codex. The signing secret. All right. I'm not going to have time to go into all these, and I've already set these up once. So you are probably going to like be looking up some tutorials the first time

if you've never built something on Xcode. It's a little confused. at first, but once you do it one time, you're set. But essentially, you know, you have to set some signing capabilities in there to make sure that your app has the, the capabilities that it needs. You need to hook up different files, right? So there's a target membership in the inspector. So again, not terribly difficult, but these are things you have to go through.

Then you're going to install your app. I'm going to show you how to do that. When you're working with codex, you need to tell it to keep it consistent, right? So for my secret, super secret little side project, I've been, you know, kicking around in the background. There's a menu app version of the app and a full blown desktop version because I want a quick access. So, you know, keep in mind that, you know, kind of the basics of prompt engineering, right? I know I talked about this yesterday, how prompt engineering is kind of dying off and context engineering is the new thing. Well, I don't know. At least when it comes to coding

early on right now, you do still need some prompt engineering 101. It's going to be really helpful. So even saying things like, you know, ensure, you know, that, you know, any change you make is consistent, right, across any instances, across any app tabs, right? That's one thing that I've kind of learned using both Claude Code and Codex, especially if you are a beginner, right? saying those things early on, talking about consistency, continuity, right, having the same display properties, no matter how you're viewing this, it is a little important. But you'll see those things over time.

And that's always something you can iterate on, right? We'll even see if I can quickly iterate on this app if it works. Also, some reset shortcuts. If something gets weird, you know, if you're like, hey, I swear I fix this, but it keeps coming up, you know, you have the equivalent of like clearing your cache in X code. which is just the clean the build folder, and then you can run it with just Command R. So Command B will build.

That's not going to launch the app. Command R technically builds it and runs it, and that will automatically launch the app, right? And then eventually, once you get it how it's working, you can go in a certain directory and you can always ask Codex. The thing I like is Codex, you know, by default, will normally send you a link that you just click on and it'll open that file or folder.

but a tricky part is sometimes it's a hidden file or folder in your library. So if you're on a Mac app, you may have to go into your finder and then make sure that you enable the library folder to be discoverable. So that's another issue that might come into play. All right. And that's it. All right. So there's some of the small details.

So let's get back into it. And let's bring up. are, well, we'll see if it's a working app or not. I'm guessing we might have to make a couple iterations. Okay. So now I'm going back into codex and at the bottom. So you'll see it gave me essentially a project file. So that's what you're going to want to look for.

It's going to be something that says X code proge, right? So that's the project file. So hopefully I'm going to click this and it's going to open up X code. And I just remembered I'm going to, instead of sharing an app, I'm going to have to share my whole screen. So sorry, live stream audience. This might be jumping around just a little bit here because I'm going to be going in and out of a couple of programs. All right.

So now I'm sharing my entire screen here. And it says here is my Xcode project. So I'm going to click this. All right. And on my other screen, let's pull it over here. It automatically brought up that project file. So I don't have to go find it. All I'm going to do is double click on this.

All right. and it's opening up now X code. All right, there we have. So it went through and it wrote all of these files, the folder structure, the hierarchy, the relationships between the files. You don't have to know anything, right? You don't have to know anything about the content view file

versus the index versus the web. You don't know any, right? And obviously these folders and files can get very complex if you keep adding functionality to your app. But here I have it. So I'm going to go ahead, just it's a habit for me. I'm one of those people. I always clear my cash and cookies. So I'm going to do this clean thing just to make sure that when I build this,

hopefully nothing that was left over in the build folder because I'm always doing a lot of tinkering around. So it should be clear. That's the equivalent. If you're not technical, it's just like I cleared my cache. All right. Now all I'm going to do is I'm going to click Command R. Okay. So this is going to build it and also run it. So at this point, if it works, we'll see. I could have a working. app just like that. All right. No worries. Uh, there's an error. Not bad. Uh, not a bad thing. Right. So all I have to do in the upper right hand corner, right, it just a big red thing popped up and said error. All right. So I'm going to click on the air. Uh, let's see here.

Why am I blanking out on how to do this? There we go. Let's see. Let's click on my error. It says cannot sign. Let me see how I can get to this. All right. So all I'm going to do is just go into my little file explorer over here. I'm going to click on the error. All right. So it looks like there's one or two errors here. Nothing crazy. I'm going to readjust my window here.

Take a screenshot. All right. I don't even need to prompt. I'm just going to drop this in codex and hopefully it'll fix it. Right. This is, you know, one of the one of the joys. of doing demos live. But I'm hoping this should be a quick and easy fix.

So you know what? Actually, as I do this, I'm going to go ahead and think of what I want to do next. So in this long prompt that I read, it's just going to, I believe, create a simple database for me. All right. Well, let's see. It looks like it's almost done it here. So let's just go ahead and give it a second. There we go.

It's editing the files. This is the great thing too. You can learn the basics if you do want to be a little more technical, right? You can actually see and read what's going on. Like any other kind of thinking model, you can read the summarized chain of thought. This is actually not really available when they first released it, but one of the updates that they released in the days after. it did kind of allow the GVT-53 codex to reveal a little bit more on how it works and how it generates. So I don't even know, honestly, what this error is, and that's a great thing.

You can just take a screenshot of it. You can copy and paste it. You don't even have to say, go fix this or here's what I was doing, right? Because it understands. It has all of that context in the context window. All right. So I'm going to go ahead. I'm going to close my X.

code. All right. It's already done. There is a new project file. I'm going to go ahead and click on this. All right. There we go. I'm going to go ahead and clean out the old one. I'm going to go ahead and build, build this new one and it's done. Just like that. All right. So I have a working app, right? The icon, you know, doesn't or the app doesn't have like a custom icon because I didn't upload one, but I could have done that if I wanted to. But now, y'all, I have an app. And here's the thing. No matter what changes I make in here, they're going to save, which is great.

All right. So it looks like what we have here is we have the different. Okay, apparently I didn't save all, send all 35. Oh, no, I did. Here they are. Cool. Okay. This is sweet.

Okay, I forgot I did this. I gave an importance score for all of the different apps. and then there's a status. So this is kind of like a little project management tool. And so for me, this is much more how my brain works, right? But one thing that I see is you can set a status. So there's these different episode, you know, ideas in here. There's a full curriculum view that has the importance, the status, all these things.

So I'm going to go in and hopefully this will work and hopefully it'll be easy enough to work with. I'm going to go back in Codex. I'm going to say like this is great. Let's add a can ban function. Please keep everything else the same. So we'll see if this works. So I also want to show you, right? If you want to add new things to your app, it's actually fairly simple.

Right. So I'm going to go ahead because again, I would never normally, you know, do this amount of opening and closing programs and cleaning the build data and all that, right? I'm only doing this because I'm doing this live and, you know, doing demos already can be buggy enough. But doing them live is especially buggy. So I always want to make sure that I do kind of best practices. Right. So you'll see here right now, Codex is going to work.

And this is very, very fast. The fact that I can make iterations, right, I should have literally put a stopwatch on the clock, but I'm pretty sure I'm looking at the time of this episode. It's been going now for about 30 seconds. Think, right? If you're in software development, you know, but to do something like adding a canband view, right? So that's kind of like a drag and drop if you've ever used a CRM with a pipeline view, right? Those little cards that you can put little projects on.

ever using a project management tools like, you know, Trello. Trello was one of the OG project management tools that had kind of like the card view or the Canban view, right? ClickUp Monday.com, right? All of them, right? They have these little, nice little cards that you can move around, all these things, right? If you had, if you were a software developer and someone said, can you add a Canban, you know, project management type view, depending on what that is, it could have taken days of development time,

right it could have taken longer all right and here we are with codex 5.3 I don't know how to code by hand I can you know kind of piece code together and be like oh here's what you know this php file does or here's what the javascript is doing right but I can't write anything by by hand and here we are now with this amazing technology that we all have access to now for free And it's doing it for me in a matter of, well, minutes. So let's see. So it did. So, okay, bummer.

So it finished up here. Return build succeeded. Okay, so for whatever reason, it didn't give me the project file. So I'm going to say, please send the updated project file. Even though I know where to get it, right? I'm just saying if you are running into this and you are non-technical, you might not want to go into that, you know, system folder, the library, go through and click.

It's actually a lot of clicking. So I'm just going to see if that will work. Sometimes it does. There we go. It says I package the updated project into a single zip. Okay. So it's not giving me what I want. Let's see if it does it here.

It's still going. So the cool thing is, right, it's running different scripts. It's running Python. It's running. It's controlling my computer, right? As we speak, I know that may not be. as evident if you're listening on the podcast. But all of these things that are happening,

it's creating these files, these folders, it's zipping things. It's unzipping. That's all happening on my local machine. Right. That's why I'm asking for the link to it. So I don't have to fumble through it and,

you know, show everyone all the files on my desktop. So here we go. It did give it to me. There's the project file. I'm going to go ahead and click it. All right. So overall,

it took like, I don't know, a minute or two. hopefully this works. I'm going to go ahead and do my little, do my little clean out here and then run it. Let's see if it works. So it says building in the upper right hand corner.

It says build succeeded. It went ahead and launched the icon. All right. So here we go. So now I have my Canban view. Let's check it out. Oh, I love it. Here's exactly.

Whoops. Got rid of that there. Here's exactly what I wanted, right? Oh, I love this. love this, right? So now I have a, all of my different episodes that I haven't started yet. So there's different default states and I could go in here and change these, I'm sure. And the other thing, too, is I can go in and tell codex, right? I want everything in the app itself to be customizable.

I want to be able to change the different names of the stages. I want a note section, right? I want a timer to, you know, to, you know, set a timer to work on these different things, right? you can integrate AI into these things. Anything you can think of, it can be done. Right. So that's what's really cool about this. I just said something simple like, right?

Oh, there's different stages, right? But what if you wanted to change the stage name or if you wanted to change, you know, how this function. But right now, I mean, this is a very simple example of something that I can use now. So pretty cool. And then I can click into it. It looks like I can. you know, write some notes.

So you'll see here. Let's see. I'm going to go in episode seven. I'm going to type episode seven test, right? As an example. All right. Click around. Go back.

It's there. Right. So it's saving everything too, right? Locally on my computer. So I don't need to worry about, oh my gosh, like what's going to happen to all this data. It saves locally on my computer. So that's it, y'all. We did it.

Went through one or two different bugs. We went through some iterations. But if nothing else, we put. to work on Wednesdays for us. And like I said, like I started this show saying, the fact that Open AI made the decision earlier this week to keep a free tier, right?

Because originally when Open AI released Codex, they said, hey, for a limited time, you know, we're going to allow free users to even go in here. But they just changed that. And they said, we are going to hopefully create or keep a free tier for Codex moving forward. So yes,

there's tons of non- software, non-coding use cases that you can do in codex and use this GPT 5.3 codex model. But even just what you can do now as a non-technical person, right? I used to think all the time, you know, 10 years ago, oh, I'd love to build this kind of app, this kind of, you know, piece of software. You can do it all, right? You can add the authorization. You can add the database.

You can add the back end if you want. But any piece of software that could make your life better. You can go out, use codex, right? Codex can obviously, it has a lot of the same capabilities as Chad, QVT, so we can go research, look at the internet, you can upload files, you can do all of these things, right? But now you can create simple apps, no coding experience required, and I showed you all how to do it here live.

All right, I hope this was helpful. If so, please go to your EverydayaI.com. We're going to be recapping all of this. So thank you for tuning in. Hope to see you back tomorrow and Everyday. for more everyday AI. Thanks y'all. Meet Firefly AI Assistant.

Now live in Adobe Firefly, the Allman One Creative AI Studio. Just describe what you want to create in your own words and the assistant handles the rest, orchestrating multi-step workflows across Adobe Creative Cloud apps, including Photoshop, Premiere Express, and more in one conversational interface. You direct the outcome while the assistant accelerates execution.

Stand control with the ability to step in and refine at any time. See it today at Firefly. fly.adobby.com. And that's a wrap for today's edition of Everyday AI. Thanks for joining us. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and leave us a rating. It helps keep us going. For a little more AI magic, visit Your EverydayAI.com

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