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ChatGPT Work Tool and Skill Reference

codex-tool-reference.simonw.chatgpt.site

41–50 of 74 posts

Re: ChatGPT Work Tool and Skill Reference

#41

Anyone using ChatGPT Work given Sam Altman's richly documented history(1), the essential elimination and/or public exit of the safety function at OpenAI(2), and the huggingface debacle's exposure of the abject operational, cultural and technical failures at OpenAI(3), is making a serious mistake. (1) https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2026/04/13/sam-altman-may... (2) https://thenextweb.com/news/openai-preparedness-te…

Which provider currently lives up to your moral code?

Re: ChatGPT Work Tool and Skill Reference

#42
post #2

See this comment for background (and creation prompt): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49504625#49505116

Simon, thanks for all the great work you do. I definitely appreciate your contributions to discussion threads here as well as your blog. I learned so much from you.

Re: ChatGPT Work Tool and Skill Reference

#43
post #11

I think the most interesting skill here is the control-browser one: https://codex-tool-reference.simonw.chatgpt.site/skills/cont... It tells ChatGPT Work how to launch a Playwright instance via its Node.js REPL, and tells it to run: nodeRepl.write(await browser.documentation()); To get further instructions. That method returns this text with full details about how to use the browser: https://codex-tool-reference.simo…

I've used a similar technique with my own tools. It helps to save context overall, by deferring the detailed instructions not only to when they're needed, but also to where they're needed.

Simply loading the browser Skill alone, doesn't always mean a browser is actually necessary (or supported). The user might've want them to control their main desktop browser; or the user might be pointing them toward a read-only HTML file that doesn't need rendering; or the sandbox might prevent network access; etc...

Codex is especially 'keen' to use Skills (especially by comparison to Claude), I often see it load Skills which it doesn't go on to use, because the main Skill content says "when not to use this". So I'm sure this is a product design decision to help with those kinds of circumstances.

Re: ChatGPT Work Tool and Skill Reference

#45

Meta comment: I've been wondering why AI-generated websites/artifacts/reports always have the same "look". It reminds me of Bootstrap (CSS Framework) days when every startup website looked the same. Are they following some sort of common guideline?

I think these guideline are built into the llms. After all with llms, any decision you don't take will be taken for you. For a so called slop site (Simon's words, not mine :P) I don't think they specified a style so the llm just decided the default it knows. One day I will run experiments (when I can afford it) trying to identify the "taste" of different llms.

I told it "Design aesthetic should be technical docs, minimal flare" - full prompt here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49504625#49505116

Re: ChatGPT Work Tool and Skill Reference

#46
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't know, SimonW made Django Python framework?

Didn't he leave the project before it even had an official release?

https://simonwillison.net/2005/Jul/17/django/

> I haven’t been involved with Django since leaving the Journal-World back in September, but now that the framework is open-sourced I look forward to contributing to its further development—both in terms of documentation and actual code.

Re: ChatGPT Work Tool and Skill Reference

#47

I don't get how this is different from Codex if Codex can do all the same things.

ChatGPT Work in the ChatGPT desktop app is effectively Codex with a different skin. It can operate on your local files in the same way.

ChatGPT Work in the ChatGPT web and mobile app experience is very different.

If you like, you can think of it as a cloud-hosted version of Codex that's skinned to look more like consumer ChatGPT.

Re: ChatGPT Work Tool and Skill Reference

#48
post #47

I don't get how this is different from Codex if Codex can do all the same things.

ChatGPT Work in the ChatGPT desktop app is effectively Codex with a different skin. It can operate on your local files in the same way. ChatGPT Work in the ChatGPT web and mobile app experience is very different. If you like, you can think of it as a cloud-hosted version of Codex that's skinned to look more like consumer ChatGPT.

If I use Codex in one session on desktop can I then resume it for cloud and mobile sessions as Work? Or do I have to make separate sessions each time? Or rather, can Codex in the cloud do the same things, if such a thing exists?

Re: ChatGPT Work Tool and Skill Reference

#49
post #2

See this comment for background (and creation prompt): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49504625#49505116

[flagged]

simonw is a fine contributor to HN and we're lucky to have him.

I realize that for some people there is too much LLM-related content and (therefore?) too much by certain authors, but that has always been the case for certain topics and certain authors in HN's history. This is a side effect of the frontpage being the same for everyone, and therefore the scarcest resource.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

Re: ChatGPT Work Tool and Skill Reference

#50
post #11

I think the most interesting skill here is the control-browser one: https://codex-tool-reference.simonw.chatgpt.site/skills/cont... It tells ChatGPT Work how to launch a Playwright instance via its Node.js REPL, and tells it to run: nodeRepl.write(await browser.documentation()); To get further instructions. That method returns this text with full details about how to use the browser: https://codex-tool-reference.simo…

Two sources of truth, if playwright updates?

Honestly, this is one of the things OpenAI does pretty well, I think, these tiny design decisions that you wouldn't notice until it becomes super annoying.

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