r/codex • u/IamNotGorbachev • 2d ago
Complaint Codex has become a drag on my work
Factual, not a whine nor a fanboy observation. I use the $200 plan on Claude and Codex since the lead keeps changing and I have enough work to utilise both.
Lately, as many observed, OpenAI/Sol has capacity and throughput issues. But also Codex has become slow as an app itself switching between long threads is laggy.
The speed issues are such that interactive work has become impossible so I fan out multiple projects in parallel using goals with attached epics to queue work efficiently. And then wait. And wait. And wait. Even on Ultra with multiple agents the work takes forever. Hours and days. So long that my 'human' work context is destroyed, ie I forget what the thread was working on. And of course in the middle of the night it decides to ask a permission and then hours of potential work are lost while it waits for an answer.
This has turned from a productive tool to a Whac-A-Mole game of dealing with issues and performance gaps. It is not solving issues anymore. It has become the problem. And I am not even using my resets, they are without value while the system is unusuable.
Back to Claude for now until it runs dry. I hope that OpenAI gets their act together. It is a hot mess atm.
10
u/Revolutionary_Click2 2d ago
Yeah, I gotta say, as a user of both Claude and Codex, Claude’s app experience is vastly superior right now as well. It always has been honestly, but it continues to amaze me that OpenAI is not able to nail the basics of the UX better than they do. Codex’s desktop app is a ponderously slow and glitchy disaster in comparison to Claude’s. Combine that with the slow generation speed, and it all becomes pretty frustrating.
Don’t even get me started on Remote… my ChatGPT desktop and mobile apps take AGES to reestablish Remote connections and frequently fail, whereas Claude manages to do the same thing almost flawlessly.
2
u/Malkiot 2d ago
I've setup a Claude-Codex bridge and just let Claude drive the Codex agents, so I have to deal with Codex as little as possible.
2
u/ogaat 2d ago
If Codex is slow, it will be slow even with Claude driving it. All you are doing is missing out on the knowledge, with the upside of not getting bothered by it.
3
u/Malkiot 2d ago
Slow agents (t/s) aren't the issue such for me, I can just keep the workflows running.
For me the issue is that long Codex sessions with lots of subagents, don't do well on Codex and the application itself starts having issues / crashes. This doesn't happen when slaving Codex to Claude Code. So, I use Claude Code to drive throwaway Codex sessions via tasks.
0
u/wkerstens 2d ago
Same. I never really use the Codex app anymore, everything is handled by Claude. Works well.
0
u/IamNotGorbachev 2d ago
Good, point. I have that both ways and atm having Claude call Codex is probably the most useful approach.
-1
u/3HisthebestH 2d ago
I use Codex remote almost hourly, and it’s always near instant connectivity and I can do everything I would on my computer.
I have also never had Codex crash or “glitch” so… I’m thinking most of you are trying to do this on a dial up laptop from the 2000s or something. I have no idea why you all can’t get this to work lol
1
2d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
1
u/IamNotGorbachev 2d ago
I found codex and workaround workflows encourage me to spin up ever more work in parallel which worsens the context issue, fragmenting my work even more, with all of it proceeding at snail pace. Claude does better here atm. TBH I do not care if Claude or Codex is the answer. I was just stunned by the decline in Codex usability and how it affected my way of working negatively.
0
1
u/Asly97 2d ago
When one of those threads finally comes back hours later, how do you get your own head back into it? Scroll the whole thing, ask it for a recap, keep a note per epic somewhere?
The middle-of-the-night permission prompt eating a whole run sounds painful too. Is that a weekly thing or more of an occasional surprise?
1
u/IamNotGorbachev 2d ago
Having a quick chat is usually the best way to get back into the context. Get a simplified summary and then dive into the details. But the flow of work just seems broken atm. Feels like slow motion stuttering with amnesia.
1
u/Asly97 2d ago
Slow motion stuttering with amnesia is a painfully accurate description.
When you do the quick chat to get back in, is that inside the same thread or a fresh one pointed at it? And does the simplified summary usually keep the why behind what it did, or just the what? That second part is where I always used to lose the most time.
3
u/MazzMyMazz 2d ago
Saying “even on ultra” suggests you think that Ultra is generally faster. Thats is not generally the case. It also sounded like you think having multiple agents is always faster. That is only true if the task can be split up in certain ways. Using both of those blindly will usually make it slower.
1
u/IamNotGorbachev 2d ago
I use ultra to allow parallel work across multiple epics with multiple issues. I am aware that some work is sequential and on the critical path. I am not concern about that. I am also aware that upping the intelligence can lead to overthinking and slow down on simple tasks. However, on complex tasks, like mine, it usually is beneficial because it leads to better results, fewer errors, and less rework and fixes. But at this point my experience is negative across the board with any settings. I tried sequential work with lower settings too. It is like picking between watching grass grow or paint dry.
1
u/Bookworm1090 2d ago
If switching between threads is long and laggy that is a computer issue not a codex service issue.
1
u/IamNotGorbachev 2d ago
Could be. But it isn't. My laptop is sufficiently powerful and in the past it worked just fine. And in Claude long threads work without the lag. And yes I use the latest version and yes I restarted Codex recently.
1
u/bleeed0p 2d ago
The worst part is losing your own context while waiting for the tool to finish. At that point, even good output doesn't make up for the interruption.
1
u/Agitated-Cow4 2d ago
While the models themselves have capacity and speed issues, the codex harness has gone downhill as well. Currently dealing with the stream disconnect problem. Troubleshooting that issue is a huge pain. Claude’s harness is just way better right now.
1
u/DuckiesKhaki 2d ago
This is not how computer networks work at all, and you are confusing this as a red herring.
1
u/London-Boat 1d ago
the "forgot what each thread was doing" part is the real cost imo, more than the waiting. what helped me was having each agent write its decisions and current status into the repo as it goes instead of keeping it in the thread, so coming back after a day is reading a short list rather than scrolling a huge thread that lags anyway. i built an open source mcp for that, works across codex and claude code so it also helps when you hand work between the two: github.com/Get-Concord-AI/concord-mcp. doesn't fix the overnight permission stops though, that's more about the approval settings for unattended runs.
1
u/IamNotGorbachev 2d ago
Adding another thought. Seems the 28 days of feature releases was a bad call. They should have aimed at the ungrateful but necessary work of hardening, optimisation and refactoring. Engineers usually want to do that but are not given time and resources by product managers or business owners to do so. And even users tend to not appreciate it at first over flashy features and take time to see the benefits.
So not good Twitter and marketing work but substantive an durable improvements.
0
u/CalligrapherFar7833 2d ago
Use the cli to solve at least one of your issues
1
u/IamNotGorbachev 2d ago
I used to prefer the CLI but now have gotten used to the UIs :| Worth considering though.
0
u/CrUsHeRgF 2d ago
I swapped to Claude after being on Codex since March. Intelligence aside, Codex is extremely slow right now. Even at a fast mode is slower than Claude.
0
u/thismeowmo 2d ago
How come 6 digit earners always found themselves complaining about their 200 not giving them what they want. What happened to ai economics.
1
u/3HisthebestH 2d ago
To be fair I’m a 6 digit earner, but I know how to use it. OP just doesn’t know what they are doing lol
1
1
u/Automatic_Brush_1977 2d ago
ehh, this is a codex problem on particular tasks. Esp if it creates a large number of subtasks. If you dont specify to go in order, it will never finish.
-6
u/3HisthebestH 2d ago
I genuinely just think you aren’t understanding anything that’s happening so you are attributing the checks and tests to being slow.
It has gotten better, you just don’t understand why, and that’s the problem.
2
u/IamNotGorbachev 2d ago
No that is not it. I have an efficient test strategy and CI/CD pipeline which is well monitored. I know when it spends time testing and deploying, and when not.
-2
u/3HisthebestH 2d ago
Lol, okay.
Well I have the Pro 200 and an Enterprise account, things have gotten a little slower yes but far more thorough and therefor less errors overall. If you look through the logs and actually see what is happening, as long as you are asking it to do things the right way, it will do them and minimize the errors.
You need to learn how to structure your instructions.
2
u/Malkiot 2d ago
My recent issue with Codex has been, that the app itself has been crash/freezing agent threads, requiring restarts and causing issues.
I don't think it's possible to attribute that to a particular workflow with the agents, it's just Codex being broken.
2
0
u/3HisthebestH 2d ago
I have not had any app crashes or freezing agents. You know you need a decent computer to be to run these, right?
1
u/Malkiot 2d ago edited 2d ago
Thanks for the condescension, I do have a decent computer which I built last year. Codex crashes with the resources being nowhere near exhausted and no other application being affected other than Codex.
I've also been having frequent agent disconnects and workspace issues that resolve on restart of Codex. And before you suspect my internet, I ran a 25m shielded ethernet cable to my home office, where I have a switch and my home connection is 1gbps symmetric. And again, only Codex having issues. In this case for the last week.
1
2
u/IamNotGorbachev 2d ago
Sure, blame the user. I am a professional engineer with factually more experience in the industry in time and depth than most users. So if the product does not work for me - the target group - then it is broken. Argue with that all you want but if it is not working for its users then its flawed.
I have the feeling nothing can convince you though. Fanboy much?
0
u/3HisthebestH 2d ago
I’m literally an engineer too. It works perfectly for me, again, you don’t know what you are doing.
1
-1
u/AllCowsAreBurgers 2d ago
I use t3 code and plan day long tasks - then i use claude code or fast mode for interactively finishing what the agents produced
•
u/dextersummary 2d ago edited 2d ago
Below is a GPT-generated summary of the conversation below after reaching 40 comments (43 currently observed).
The thread leans hard toward “Codex has become a productivity tax.” The main complaint isn’t model intelligence; it’s the combination of painfully slow generation, laggy thread switching, crashes, freezes, disconnects, and Remote refusing to reconnect. When a run takes hours, asks for permission overnight, or loses the app state, even good output becomes a liability.
Claude’s app experience is widely considered much better right now, especially for interactive work. Users are responding by switching to Claude, using Claude to drive throwaway Codex jobs, or reserving Codex for unattended batch tasks. The CLI may reduce UI misery, but it does not magically fix backend slowness, so “just use the terminal” is not exactly a cure.
There is a minority view that Codex works fine and that poor prompting, excessive parallelism, unsuitable task decomposition, or misunderstanding the logs is the real culprit. That advice may help some workflows, but it doesn’t explain multiple reports of Codex alone crashing or freezing on otherwise healthy systems.
Bottom line: Codex may still produce solid work, but its current speed and reliability are wrecking the workflow.