Codex for almost everything

There are people running OpenClaw, so yeah, crazy as it sounds, some do that.

I'm reluctant to run any model without at least a docker.

My current expectation is that the Cowork/Codex set of "professional agents" for non-technical users will be one of the most important and fastest growing product categories of all time, so far.

i.e. agents for knowledge workers who are not software engineers

A few thoughts and questions:

1. I expect that this set of products will be extremely disruptive to many software businesses. It's like when a new VP joins a company, they often rip and replace some of the software vendors with their personal favorites. Well, most software was designed for human users. Now, peoples' agents will use software for them. Agents have different needs for software than humans do. Some they'll need more of, much they'll no longer need at all. What will this result in? It feels like a much swifter and more significant version of Google taking excerpts/summaries from webpages and putting it at the top of search results and taking away visits and ad revenue from sites.

2. I've tried dozens of products in this space. For most, onboarding is confusing, then the user gets dropped into a blank space, usage limits are uncompetitive compared to the subsidized tokens offered by OpenAI/Anthropic, etc. It's a tough space to compete in, but also clearly going to be a massive market. I'm expecting big investment from Microsoft, Google etc in this segment.

3. How will startups in this space compete against labs who can train models to fit their products?

4. Eventually will the UI/interface be generated/personalized for the user, by the model? Presumably. Harnesses get eaten by model-generated harnesses?

A few more thoughts collected here: https://chrisbarber.co/professional-agents/

Products I've tried: ai browsers like dia, comet, claude for chrome, atlas, and dex; claw products like openclaw, kimi claw, klaus, viktor, duet, atris; automation things like tasklet and lindy; code agents like devin, claude code, cursor, codex; desktop automation tools like vercept, nox, liminary, logical, and raycast; and email products like shortwave, cora and jace. And of course, Claude Cowork, Codex cli and app, and Claude Code cli and app.

Edit: Notes on trying the new Codex update

1. The permissions workflow is very slick

2. Background browser testing is nice and the shadow cursor is an interesting UI element. It did do some things in the foreground for me / take control of focus, a few times, though.

3. It would be nice if the apps had quick ways to demo their new features. My workflow was to ask an LLM to read the update page and ask it what new things I could test, and then to take those things and ask Codex to demo them to me, but it doesn't quite understand it's own new features well enough to invoke them (without quite a bit of steering)

4. I cannot get it to show me the in app browser

5. Generating image mockups of websites and then building them is nice

Does that version of Codex still read sensitive data on your file system without even asking? Just curious.

https://github.com/openai/codex/issues/2847

Programmers mostly don't. Ordinary people see figuring out how to use the computer as a hindrance rather than empowering, they want Star Trek. They want "computer, plan my next vacation to XYZ for me" to lay out a full itinerary and offer to buy the tickets and make the reservations.

Knowledge work is work most people don't really want to deal with. Ordinary people don't put much value into ideas regardless of their level of refinement

Only on macOS though? This doesn't seem to work on Linux. Neither does Claude Cowork, not officially.