Everyday AI Podcast – An AI and ChatGPT Podcast - Ep 805: Codex Record and Replay: How to Teach an Agent Once Your Most Time-Consuming Workflows

Episode Date: June 24, 2026

Ever wish your agent would just watch you work and copy you? 👯Oh wait, that's exactly what OpenAI released. The new 'Record and Replay' feature in Codex allows you to simply record anything you do and turn it into a repeatable workflow for your agents. Join us LIVE as we show you how. ⏺️Codex Record and Replay: How to Teach an Agent Once Your Most Time-Consuming Workflows -- An Everyday AI Chat with Jordan WilsonNewsletter: Sign up for our free daily newsletterMore on this Episode: Episode PageToday's Episode 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:Codex Record and Replay Feature OverviewTransition from Prompting to DemonstrationSkill Markdown Files as Business ArtifactsCodex vs Claude Desktop Agent ComparisonWorkflow Recording and Security Best PracticesStep-by-Step Codex Record and Replay DemoVideo Understanding Capability in CodexEditing and Sharing Skills Across PlatformsAutomating Multi-App, Cross-System WorkflowsValidation, Scheduling, and Automation of SkillsTimestamps:00:00 OpenAI's record and replay feature04:41 Preparing for screen sharing08:56 Managing Small Tasks Efficiently10:03 Automating top story analysis15:43 Debating AI business strategies18:29 Codec's video ingest feature22:01 Practicing low stakes automation24:57 Using skills and plugins efficiently26:19 Using Chattopty for workflow automationKeywords: codex record and replay, OpenAI record and replay, record and replay feature, codex workflow automation, proactive AI agents, skill.md file, skill markdown file, editable skill files, demonstration over prompting, desktop AI agents, Mac AI features, video ingestion AI, video understanding by AI, cross-platform AI workflows, AI workflow scheduling, codex plugins, codex Chrome profile, AI screen recording, reusable AI skills, skill file cross-compatibility, Claude desktop import, Google Gemini video support, AI workflow privacy, enterprise AI permissions, low stakes workflow automation, scheduled AI automations, computer use access, browser automation AI, AI handling Chrome profiles, prompt engineering replacement, automation library, validation of AI skill files, skill validator, PyYAML error handling, skill replay, Codex versus Claude, multi-app workflow automation, real business artifact AI, automation success criteria, desktop program integrations, computer task recording, mundane workflow automation, non-technical AI setup, AI scheduled worker, AI skill refinementSend 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. As smart as today's AI systems are, do you ever wish that they would just watch you do all your work and then magically do it all for you? Well, that's what we have now with a new feature from OpenAI and Codex called ReCRECally. record and replay. Because here's the reality. As we are continuing to shift from the responsive chatbot era to the proactive agent era, there's still a lot of manual work that we have to do, whether that's scheduling and automating your workflows, creating new skill files by hand or whatever it may be, whether you're using chat GPT, codex,

Claude, co-pilot, or Gemini, there's a lot of manual work that needs to go in to create these repeatable and autonomous processes. But I think that may start to change. And I think that with what this new feature is in Codex Record and Replay, we have maybe a preview of what's coming next as we have these extremely powerful super apps that live on our desktop and can do work for us. So that's what we're going to be going over on today's show. But here is the big picture of codex, record, and replay. So I think prompting is kind of losing to demonstration. And maybe that's not a bad thing, even if you've spent a lot of time refining your prompt

engineering skills or how you type to a chatbot that could be leaving by the the wayside. So opening I shipped this new feature less than a week ago. And essentially, you demonstrate something on your actual computer, on your Mac right now, and it becomes an editable skill.md file, then the agent can reuse. So the AI interface, I think, is moving away from just typing instructions to just showing your work and showing a series of tasks that go into a project that you may want to start automating. And I think that this right now, it seems like a small feature, right? And I'm actually surprised this one didn't blow up more than it did.

But I think this is a big step in transferring agency and workflow to autonomous systems. Because the other thing, why I think this is actually a big deal, because this kind of opening eyes showing their cards in terms of model capabilities. because now through whatever magic they did, they are now, can understand and ingest video, which is huge because this has been a big advantage that Google Gemini has had for the last two years as the only kind of big player that you could upload a video to and it could actually understand what was going on inside that video. So that's a bigger picture.

Maybe we'll talk about that a little bit more. But here, stick with me for the next 25 minutes. This is going to be a short one. on today's show, here's what you're going to learn. You're going to learn what OpenAI actually changed inside of codex beyond just the launch demo. You're going to know why the skill MD or the skill markdown file is the real business artifact here that leaders should understand.

You're going to know how the shared format changes the codex versus Claude comparison. Yeah, stick around for that. And you're going to know which workflows you should try to record first without creating unnecessary security risk. All right, I hope you're excited for this. This is Everyday AI in our weekly segment, putting AI to work on Wednesday. So once a week, I get a little brave. I demo some live technology.

It's unedited, unscripted. We'll see how it goes. Sometimes these hands-on demos are amazing. Sometimes we get bugs, but that's the reality of generative AI in working on the cutting edge. sometimes you get cut. All right. So if you haven't already, please make sure to subscribe to the podcast if this is helpful.

And then make sure you go to your everyday AI.com. Sign up for the free daily newsletter. And we're going to be recapping not just the highlights from today's show, but all the other AI news and developments you need to know to be the smartest person in AI at your company. All right. So without further ado, yeah, let's get dirty, shall we? All right. So this one's going to be a little tricky because I'm going to be jumping back in full.

between some different screens, some different things I have going on. But we're going to try to make this work. And this is one of those that if you are listening on the podcast, this might be one of those ones that you should tune into for the video version. So you can always see that video version of this on our website at your everydayaI.com. All right. I'm just making sure doing one more check here before I start sharing my screen. that I don't have anything to private.

All right. So yeah, not gonna be doxing myself or anyone else or I'll only be doxing myself slightly. All right. So let's go ahead and share the screen. And one thing to know, this is a plugin, okay? So if you don't know too much about Kodax, I've done a couple of shows recently on Kodax.

But if you have a paid chat Chabutis subscription, then, you have a Codex subscription. It is the same, you know, it uses the same subscription, which is really nice. So you can go download. Codex is a desktop program, whether you use Mac or Windows, although a lot of the features come to Macs for Mac first, like, record and replay. All right, and then after you are logged into Codex, if you haven't downloaded it already, go ahead and do that. You can follow along with me. And then you're going to make sure to go into your upper left hand corner. There's a plug-ins section. All you're going to do is search for record.

and replayed. Then you are going to add the plugin. After you do that, if you are brand new to codex, you're probably going to have to go through your Mac security settings and grant it some access to some different privacy features that it needs. Because as an example, this uses computer use. So you do give it access to essentially read and write to your entire computer. So, you know, if you are using this in an enterprise setting,

make sure to get the permissions you need before doing this, understands the pros and the cons and the risk. And that just goes for not just. the record and replay then codex, but for anything, desktop, right? So whether you're talking about codex, uh, Claude, um, you know, desktop using Claude code, Claude Co-work, uh, anti-gravity, whatever you're using on your desktop, always keep that in mind. So after you have codex, you're logged in with your chat, GPT plan.

You've installed the record and replay plugin. Here's what we're going to do. So I'm going to do this. It might seem a little backwards, all right? But stick with me here. I'm doing it like this for a. reason mainly so hopefully the demo can work. All right.

So live stream audience, let me know if you can see my screen here. All right. I think we're pretty good not giving away too much. Aside from the fact, yes, I do have, uh, you know, codex and ClaudeCode running here at the bottom like I always do. Uh, and a couple other secret, uh, secret projects I'm working on down there. Okay. So I'm going to put in a prompt first describing what I'm going to do.

And you might be saying, Jordan, that defeats the entire. purpose. Yes and no. Okay, because my example here requires a little nuance. So also think of what this is and what it isn't because right now, this feature, all it does is it sees your screen. So I do think that they're going to add in the feature where you can talk to it at the same time. So you can talk it through and walk it through visually at the same time. But essentially, this is going to record my screen, everything that I do. So because I'm doing a live demo and I walk this to hopefully work and, you know, not have to accidentally log into all these different places. I'm first going to give it a precursor on what I'm doing. So I'm just putting in a simple

prompt. And for this, I'm going to go ahead. I'm going to go ahead put this prompt in. Okay. Nothing crazy here. I'm just telling it what I'm going to do. So I want you to think of that manual thing that you do that usually requires what I call kind of this context carry. So, you know, carrying contacts from different programs. I'm doing something extremely. extremely simple, very straightforward. All right. I'm just having my thing that I'm trying to automate. This is something I don't have time for,

even though it's not super time consuming. It's just all of these small little tasks. When I think about them in my head, I'm like, oh, this requires three, four, five different websites, all these different steps, even if it only takes 10 minutes. A lot of times I just don't do that because my day-to-day schedule is absolutely bogger bananas, right? In my mind, even if a task is 10 minutes,

If it requires me going into five, six, seven, eight different systems, doing a lot of copying and pacing, carrying context over, even a little bit of brain power. Sometimes I just don't do them, which is why I really like this new feature. So all I'm doing in this prompt, I'm saying for this chat, I'm going to be using the record and replay eventually, but do not use it yet. And I'm just saying, here's a primer on what I'm going to do before I hit record. Yes, I know this is kind of counterintuitive, but because it requires a little bit of nuance, this is why I'm typing it out. And the reason being, what I'm trying to do is I'm going to go into my Beehive newsletter. That is our email newsletter provider. And I'm going to find the five most clicked on stories from our last newsletter.

But here's the thing. Most days, that's our actual website, right? It's everyone clicks on the episode page. They go to our website. I don't care about that. Right. So what I'm ultimately trying to do is I want to see the five most clicked stories that are not ours, right?

that aren't also not something, you know, sometimes we link out to Twitter or, you know, a lot of times it's Spotify. People click on our Spotify link. So, you know, I can't just go click on the five, you know, top stories. I do have to explain that nuance. And Codex would get this right because this is an editable skill that ultimately this is going to do, that then I can run, you know, whenever I want by calling on the skill or I can make this a daily automation, which is what I'm going to do. But all I'm going to do, the five most popular. stories, take all the text in there, copy and paste it, put it into Notebook L.M, and then I'm going to create an audio overview, the debate style. So essentially, every day, I can wake up, I can know the five

most important stories that our audience thinks about. Not only that, the content of everything, have it be extremely relevant, but then have two hosts, right? I love Notebook LN. To have two hosts kind of debate different sides of those stories. So I can hopefully, right, better understand how we're audiences thinking about these things. All right. So that's all I'm doing. So I went through, I told it. This is what I'm doing. So now I'm going to click the at button. All right. And then I'm going to click record and replay. All right. And so all I'm doing is saying, you know, let's start. All right. So I just clicked the at button. I typed in record and replay. I click let's start. So now what should happen is it's going to say, okay, we're recording now. And then it's going to

create a little recording thing at the bottom. I want to make sure I have everything ready. Yes, I do. I'm going to drag this over here. Make sure I'm not showing anything. All right, we're good. Yeah, I can't even show all my notebook Labs because, yeah, there's some private things in there. All right.

So here we go. I'm just doing inside codex. I at tag record and replay. I said, let's start. It should. Let's see if it goes here. All right. It says it's reading the skill.

It's thinking. There we go. And so now I have. a little recording at the bottom of my screen. So I'm going to try to go as fast as I can, but I'll talk you through it for a podcast audience. Nothing crazy is happening here, but Codex is now recording my screen.

I do have dual monitor, so hopefully this will work okay. All right. So now I'm going into my Beehive account. I'm logged in. I'm going to the newsletter. I'm going to yesterday's newsletter. I'm going to, where am I going?

Performance. Yes. Okay. So now here's all the different ones. the different clicks. These are all the different stories. So, I'm going to click what I think are five of the most red stories. I'm just going in order here. All right. AI moves too fast to follow, but you're expected to keep up. Otherwise, your career or company might lag behind while AI native competitors leap ahead. But you don't have 10 hours a day to understand it all.

That's what I do for you. But after 700 plus, episodes of everyday AI. The most common questions I get is, where do I start? That's why we created the Start Here series, an ongoing podcast series of more than a dozen episodes you can listen to in order. It covers the AI basics for beginners and sharpens the skills of AI champions pushing their companies forward. In the ongoing series, we explain complex trends in simple language that you can turn into action. There's three ways to jump in. Number one, go scroll back to the first one in episode 691. Number two, tap the link in your show notes at any time for the start here series.

Or you can just go to start here series.com, which also gives you free access to our inner circle community where you can connect with other business leaders doing the same. The start here series will slow down the pace of AI so you can get ahead. I want to make sure all of these are actual news stories. There we go. It looks like we have them all. Okay. One is just for GLM, which just takes you to their website.

So that's not going to tell me anything. So I'm just actually going to Google it because it looks like we just linked to their actual website. But let me just go ahead and grab the actual announcement post there. There we go. Okay. So I think I'm good. All right. This one couldn't be reached for whatever reason.

All right. We're good. We're good. What is this? This was a random tool. All right. So I'm not going to do. that one. We've got to verify myself via Cloudflare. Yeah, this is fun. All right. Let's do one more.

I do want to make sure that we have five that we can actually copy and paste and grab the text. All right. It looks like this Fortune article is not working. Cool. So maybe Codex will see that I can't copy and paste this because it's, you know, apparently behind a pay wall. All right. We'll see if codex picks up on that or not. But again, this is editable. So I can always go and say if you can't access the text then, you know, go down to the next story. Okay. So it looks like we're good here. So I'm going to go ahead and grab all of the text from these.

So I'm going to copy and paste. I'm going to go into copied text. I'm going to paste, insert next. I'm clicking. Let me just X out of that one. That was something about Nvidia, about the water sustainability. I'm going to click on add sources. Here's Open AI announcing how they're using AI to diagnose rare genetic diseases.

I'm pasting that into notebook LM. Again, I'm just copying and pasting the context of all of these pages. All right, next, there was a micron in inthropic announcement. I'm copying and pasting that. I'm adding this inside of notebook LM. We have three stories so far. Let's get two more. Copying and pasting the GLM 5.2.

All right. Putting that in there. There we go. And then our last one here, something about someone leaving deep mind for anphropic. Let's go ahead. Actually, there's a ton of extra stuff on that page. So we'll see if Codex picks this up that there's a lot of extra stuff here.

It's a shorter article. So I'm going to copy and paste that in. And done. All right. The next thing, and this is all laid out in the instructions. I want Codex to go on here, click audio. And then, but I want to. customize this. So there's a little carrot. I'm going to click that. I want it to go to the debate,

all right? And then I actually have a prompt that I'm going to want it to copy and paste. And I told it this. So the prompt, the custom prompt that I'm using for this audio overview is this. The included sources are web page context of the most clicked articles from the everyday AI newsletter. Please simulate how business, I'm going to say how busy business leaders who are leading AI implementation at their companies. That's you guys, right? Maybe interpreting these stories and debate how each side thoughtfully thinks about these with pinpoint detail, avoid generalities or soft takes.

All right. And then I told codex once I hit generate, it is done. So let me go back. All I have to do is I just have to click the record button one more time. and then what that does is it sends a message to codex actually that says I'm done recording. Okay, so now what it's saying is it says I'm stopping the recorder now. Then I'll inspect the captured event stream directly. After that, I'll build the reusable skill rather than just summarizing the demo.

So pretty good. So I'm going to give that a minute to cook as we go over some of the other details. and then hopefully we'll see it at the end and I'll see if I can actually you know go and run this skill we'll see how long it takes all right also I just realized I forgot to do a couple of things that I told codex I was going to do like renaming the notebook which I didn't do so we'll see what it picks up on some of the nuance there but let's just quickly go over what's new I talked about a lot of this as I was going through but right now this is Mac only and during the recording Codex observes

everything you do. So actions, what you click on, you can do different programs. So I just told it to go to a specific Chrome profile. So when it builds this skill, it is going to tell itself to use that Chrome profile. So Codex has all of these different skills, right? So one of the big differences between Codex and chat GPT is, well, Codex is an autonomous coding agent. Don't worry if you're not technical. All that means is it can use your computer. It can use any programs, any other. other desktop programs. One of the most use things I have Codex do is to use Claude code on the desktop, to use Google Gemini on the desktop. So I just have it use all my other desktop programs. It can read and write files, all that good stuff. But Codex observes everything you

do. So different actions you take, what you click on, what you highlight, what you type in, etc. And also the window content. And then those observations in order sequentially, essentially become this skill file that changes what you're doing. Right. So when the recording stops, and this is what's happening now live on my other screen, Codex starts to create this skill. And this is what I think is really important because a skill is an editable file, which is really nice. At any time I can go in and I can update this. But here's the big unlock that I don't think most people are talking about. Aside from the fact like, oh my gosh, apparently, uh, GPD 55 via codex can ingest and understand video files, which is a first for open

AI at scale. So before it could use Python, it could go in. You could upload a video. It could look at things frame by frame. But as far as I know, this is the first time that open AI slash codex slash chat, you can actually ingest and understand video. And like I said, this is a huge advantage that Google has had for like a year and a half. It's something this process here. I've actually been doing this well before codex record and replay. I was using Google Gemini because I would dictate something. I would upload these little things. And I was creating skills.

I was already doing this. But again, I'm a little dorky. I always try to break these things. But this is pretty big. But keep in mind, this is skills MD file. This is an asset that doesn't just have to live inside of codex. Obviously, it's going to work best in codex because everything that it writes, you know, if it's using different skills, if it's using different apps, it's going to be tagging

those in a codex manner that codex can read. However, you can use this in clause. desktop right you'll have to go in but you can import this skill into cloud desktop you can change you know if it does call a codex specific skill you can change that over if it's you know using clods or sorry if it's using codex computer use or codex chrome you know you can go and update those things accordingly but essentially you are using this record uh feature to literally do anything right uh and this is why i think codex and clod can actually become more connected now this is You know, don't think of this is just locking yourself into codex,

although I do think the harness and codex is much better than clawed desktop. And all the benchmarks show that. But if you are a heavy clawed desktop user, and that's where you get the majority of your work done, but you still also have a chat chagipt account, you should probably go in and give this a try because that shared structure matters, because now these replays, the recording replays, can be used across many different surfaces.

And remember, it works through your screens, your browsers, and your plugins. So you can use other saved skills. You can use other plugins because this is an editable feature. So anything that I would have typed in codex, right? All I did when I started, I just said, let's start. Right. I could have typed something out and said, let's use this skill. Let's use these apps. You know, you're going to watch me work on my computer. I just did something simple that would hopefully work. All right. Also, scripts and connectors can increase the reliability, but screen control, you know, it does increase those trust requirements. So if you are rolling this out, you know, in your enterprise,

make sure that you get all those proper permissions that you need. And the limits right now are privacy and scope. So, you know, not everyone has this. You do have to be on a Mac. If you are in the EU, UK, Switzerland, you don't have access to this. And I would always start off with low stakes workflow. So what I just showed, right, this isn't something that's being published live. this is something that I'm using internally.

This is still a very new feature, even for me. I've been using it a lot. I like it. It's still a new feature. So I would start by using this with low stakes things. So, you know, I would go through list your weekly computer tasks with all the steps and clear success criteria. So for me, the success criteria for this is, okay, is it going to accurately find those

five things? And I open my notebook LM app every morning. If I go take a walk, I can listen to this and be better up to date on probably, hopefully, what all of you are thinking. So I would start just recording one short workflow using realistic inputs, no secrets, no, you're right, no, no passwords, nothing like that. Read each skill when it's done before rerunning it or setting it up as a schedule of automation. And you do that in Codex literally.

So it looks like this is done recording. It called this skill just the Beehive notebook L.M. Debate. So now I can say run this every day at 6 a. Yeah. Right. That's all you have to do. And then every day at 6 a.m. I can open my notebook L.M. app. And it's that, go to the studio section. And it's waiting for me. All right. So we can read each skill file, refine preferences and build your automation library. All right. Let's check in. I don't think I'm going to have time to rerun this skill, but I do want to check it. All right. So it says done. So it took three minutes. Oh, wow. And impressive here. That was 167 event capture. And I would go through always encourage. people read the chain of thought. So I'm going through here. I can see exactly what it did. Make sure everything is correct. I'm looking through this. It looks like it's doing a pretty good job.

I don't see anything that's wrong. And then it says validation passed with official skill validator. The only hiccup was something with pie yamel. So something with the programming language there. And instead it kind of wrote its way around that. So pretty good. And then it says that anytime I can invoke this later using the Beehive notebook LM debate skill. So as an example, let me just open this. I'm going to say run the the Beehive notebook skill right now. All right. So we'll just see, make sure it's going to kick off.

It should start taking over my browser here. So we'll probably see that a little bit in the background just to show everyone that things are, well, hopefully running and working. And there we go. So it's running it now. I'm not going to sit around for another, you know, three to 10 minutes and blab on because I wanted to keep this one tight. You know, hey, under 30 minutes, there we go. But it's going, it's working.

And now from here, I would validate it. I would run it once. I would make sure everything is correct. I would go listen to it on my notebook LM app. I would see what I wanted to tweet. Once I get it exactly how I want it, then I schedule it. You schedule it and forget it. But as we wrap up today's show, I want you to really understand what this unlocks.

because a couple of things. Number one, it is that I think now the easiest way to create skills. Skills still to this day, skills and, you know, plugins, which is, you know, code access version of using skills and apps. So skills and plugins are, I think, probably the new measure, right? It's not about how many tokens you and your teams use. It's about how often is your agent running a skill or a, um, or a scheduled skill.

I think that's huge because that's where you are starting to actually win back time by running repeatable workflows without you, the human, having to go in, type something, find some,

oh, where's this Google doc? Where's this obsidian, bolt? Where's all this at? Right? So, you know, really recording your mundane workflows across different browser tabs. Obviously, you can do things where you're logged in like this, right?

Obviously, I was logged into my Gmail to reach notebook LM. I was logged into my, my Beehive account. So I told it to use my Chrome profile because I keep those logged in. So think about all of those things that you do over and over and over.

And not having to write something out by hand, although I kind of did a little bit of that just to ensure that this would hopefully work zero shot. But think of what this unlocks and what this changes. And it doesn't require literally anything. It doesn't require any technical skill. I'm not an overly technical person.

You go in, if you have a chat, GPT account, download codex, go through again, assuming you have all permissions, record these workflows, and it's done. Right. And now you have a worker working for you that you just showed it what to do and it did it. And I think this is a breath of fresh air, a very small feature that is going to make a big difference. So thank you for tuning in.

I hope this was helpful doing our AI Wednesday at work series. Like I said, I've done a couple other codex walkthroughs. So make sure you go check out 781, episode 781, where we went over code. sites. Another great one with I think a lot of value there. So make sure you go check that out. And then go to your EverydayAI.com. Sign up for the free daily newsletter. We're going to be recapping the highlights from today's show and a whole lot more. Thanks for tuning in. Hope to see you back tomorrow and Every Day for more Everyday AI. Thanks y'all. 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 everyday AI.com and sign up to our daily newsletter so you don't get left behind. Go break some barriers and we'll see you next time.