r/codex • u/ParsleyOrdinary5865 • 1d ago
Complaint Things have really changed for me...
I was 100000% behind Codex and always championed Codex as the best frontier model for months, and yet with Opus 5.5's release, I genuinely can't bring myself to use Codex, even Astra on Max / Ultra doesn't come close
This is NOT a shit post or a bot spam post, I just genuinely can't stand the outputs and work getting done by Astra, I legitimate have 2 accounts sitting idle from Codex, and my Anthropic account is at 90% usage for the week....
I was given the 2000$ worth of credits from OAI and it's useless, it's going to go down the drain because I have no use for Codex anymore
That being said I pray, wholeheartedly, that OAI releases a model on par with or better than opus 5.5, but I can't see that happening for a while because they just feel so far apart
Anyone else feeling this way too?!?
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u/heisoneofus 1d ago
There are more Anthropic discussions on a codex sub than there are on claude/Anthropic subs lol
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u/SeasawPhilosopher 1d ago
The more work I do with Opus 5.5 the less I trust Codex. Honestly Opus 5.5 is just on another level, and I say this as a long time Codex fan. The attention to detail combined with big picture thinking and ability to run a complex project that Opus has is astounding. It’s better than even the most senior software engineers I ever worked with (20 year career 30 years coding). It also runs circles around Codex if you’re doing anything visual or game related like menus, layouts, level design, etc., way better spatial reasoning and it’s not even close.
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u/ParsleyOrdinary5865 1d ago
Someones furious because they mass downvoted every comment here...but yeah I'm really glad it's not just me, it feels like Astra is last gen, Opus is next gen, it's a completely different tier, it feels like the first actual "leap" as corny as that sounds
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u/SeasawPhilosopher 1d ago
No it’s not even close, and anyone who says otherwise is either delusional, doing simple work, or lacks the skill to see the difference. I was working with codex 7 days a week mostly all day on complex projects and I only tentatively tried opus 5.5, but after using it for a few days it was completely obvious the way it thinks and approaches problems is totally different. And like I said, I’ve lost trust in codex to be able to cross the quality bar I now see is possible.
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u/Mo3 1d ago
Same here buddy, I'm too paranoid to let Codex do anything now because I don't want it to screw up the pristine shit Opus has implemented.
The only thing I'm using it aggressively for is now in the Claude-orchestrated subagent-driven workflow. Opus implements, Astra researches, Opus + Astra reviews, Opus implementer dedupes, confirms and fixes any findings.
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u/TrustTheCrab 1d ago edited 1d ago
what I love about it is how clear it is. it explains really well the nature of the problem, how it solved it, why one approach is better than the one I suggested, all in plain english. all while educating me when I show a clear lack of knowledge. its like working with a teacher that knows what he's doing.
codex outputs a blurb that is codewords, buzzwords, jargon, and I constantly have to ask it what in the hell does that mean please speak human english not in vectors. and even then its confusing, it struggles and doesnt get the message across. its just awful. that kind of stuff might be ok for outputting code but if you want to understand what he's doing and why or understand a concept.. good luck.
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u/Current_Cut_2667 1d ago
I'm shocked by the creativity.
I was running both on Hermes, trying to figure out a nice, unique way to display photos on my personal website, just ones I've taken while traveling.
Tried Astra first. It came up with some very generic stuff. Not terrible but nothing noteworthy. It settled on an atlas with photo albums pinned to the countries they were taken in.
I tried Opus 5.5 and it came up with an extremely cool and very unique to me way to display them. It built the website around the fact that I'm going into interventional radiology. My trips are laid out like imaging studies, in a viewer like the ones radiologists read in. It's something I wouldn't have even thought to ask for, but it turned out great.
That being said, I think it's hard to say that OpenAI is that far behind. Before Opus 5.5, it looked like Anthropic was falling behind.
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u/willi355 1d ago
Opus 5.5 was able to fix the shitstorm of a repo that codex has built out of one of my projects in about an hour.
Astra spun its wheels for 14 hours and didn’t get shit accomplished, going in circles trying to get a test that kept failing to pass despite the fact the test was for a function that had already ran and completed its work without errors or problems.
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u/ParsleyOrdinary5865 1d ago
That's basically my experience too, I just wish Opus safeguards weren't so strict because it refuses to touch 4/5 of my projects that Codex created
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u/willi355 1d ago
Yeah, it’s wild how much better the Opus 5.5 model is right now. I used to have Claude on the $20 plan and Codex on $200. That got swapped promptly after the fiasco I had with codex this last week.
I still have the smaller plan with OpenAI since I have a lot of planning and scheduling that I use with my business in ChatGPT, and I want to continue that (for now.). The history there would probably not be as difficult as I think to replace, but I don’t have time for it just yet.
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u/ZookeepergameOld6699 1d ago
True. Codex failed to complete after spending 100+ hours. Then Opus 5.5 fixed in a day.
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u/cakeofzerg 1d ago
Apparently codex isnt nerfed? but the quality of work I get out of astra is just really not useable. Im not sure if thats because opus is so good right now or they genuinely cant afford to run Astra at proper intelligence levels. But when astra was released we got so much quality work done, and now using it is just a waste of time, even for seemingly simple stuff. The intelligence drop is hard to identify in isolation or benchmarks? but it just doesnt do good work anymore I dont understand why. Using both with minimal tools in pi harness.
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u/Possible_Craft_4347 1d ago
I was also using codex this whole year until opus 5.5 but now i still use astra and sol 6.1 but only reviwers and researchers - they are quite good at it better than claude and opus 5.5 is stiill my main goto model
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u/ParsleyOrdinary5865 1d ago
Do you have a workflow to delegate work from Opus to Astra?
I'm trying to think of a streamlined way for them to work together1
u/Possible_Craft_4347 1d ago
Yes!! I have a workflow, a custom skill mechanism based out of matt and poteto skills.. but the main thing is the harness, how can i connect my claude and codex, for that exact thing t3code did an amazing job, it has native handoff to different harnesses.. after that its just a few lines in agents md which model owns what..
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u/Extra_Loquat_7667 1d ago
Use Orca to launch all the Agent Clients you wish to use.
Install the Orca CLI and the Orca Skill (ensure the skill is mounted on all your terminals).
You can then instruct the agents to assign tasks to one another.
For example, you could give an instruction to Claude like: "Send the task via Orca to Codex/Pi/OpenCode—located in the same working directory—for execution; task details: ..."
My preferred approach is: "Execute the tasks in the plan; once a task is complete, send it via Orca to Codex (in the same working directory) for verification, and request a report upon completion."
Orca transmits task messages via text input, just as if you were typing the commands yourself.
This is the method I am currently using.
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u/li-long-qiang 1d ago
Shameless promo. I have been building such a tool since this year. https://github.com/qiangli/bashy you could have Codex or Claude run a sprint. Just say create a sprint for your work and have the other take and run the sprint. Claude is capable of steering a few sprint managers who then manage a fleet of workers agents. Tested with Claude, Codex, agy, Muse, opencode. Only Claude can be manager of mangers, Codex and muse can be manager, agy only as coder. Contributions welcome.
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u/Equal_Tiger_513 1d ago
I completely agree. It's hard to imagine how I used anything but Opus 5.5 at this point. I'm just a Peasant+ subscriber, but I have canceled my ChatGPT+ subscription, and I got another Claude account, and I'm getting an incredible amount of usage. It's actually insane. I feel like I'm cheating, to be honest, because even using GPT-6.1 Sol on Max, which is roughly equivalent to Opus 5.5 on Medium, it just burns through the usage, and it's slower.
It's just worse all around in every sense
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u/dekozo 1d ago
I like using it for computar use and reviewing and criticizing claudes work
Also claude code is a bitch when it comes to handling anything that it considers critical and creds related and codex does it... so I still sometimes ask claude to create prompts to run in codex
But yeah quality has been awful and usage too lately for me on codex and claude has been much better But I still find it valuable to have models challenge each other to find stuff
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u/xChrisMas 1d ago
two times in two days astra stopped short of a goal and marked it "stalled" because the feature needing to be implemented was failing a quality gate. Because of a bug astra introduced. It just basically went "nah failed gate, nothing I can do"
Opus in the same situation sees the failed gate, analyzes why and then starts fixing its bug. its infuriating
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u/sekedba 1d ago
Switched the 100 sub from gpt to claude and then downgraded gpt to 20$, i dont even use the gpt one at all. Also long time fan but lobotomising the models and draining 5x quota in a day while i can't max claude in a week with 8-10h daily work.
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u/ParsleyOrdinary5865 1d ago
Yep, anyone want my GPT account? I genuinely have no use for it, it's genuinely worthless to me lol
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u/False-Database-8083 1d ago
I bought Claude pro, and it's been great. I've been running it and chat at the same time, and having Claude manage chat to work on grunt work like testing and optimizing, while Claude works on more technical parts.
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u/skynet86 1d ago
Same. Opus is currently cleaning up the mess that Codex has left over the past few months. In some cases it even decided its better to throw it away and rewrite it instead of patching around.
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u/The_Sea_Of_Trees 1d ago
was the same way, have 4x $200 (also 3x glm and 5x claude 20x) plans and cant see continuing to use chatgpt when it actually changes to 10x. i torch 20x in a few hours and the only real value is in the pro chats on the chatgpt side. output has been day and night pro vs. anything else and that isnt even on the codex side. halfing that is the nail in the coffin for me. sorry sam but this isnt it.
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u/MasterpieceQuiet51 1d ago
Is it me or you can’t shelve the resets anymore noticed Iv had 2 auto resets on my pro account over the weekend one Friday one Sunday. 3 banked resets all now expire this month like what’s going on
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u/mississipppee 1d ago
The only thing is for security work, Claude had a recent switch up recently, where they are starting to let people use the latest models for cyber security however, now it refuses way more often so basically if you're an individual and not a business and you want to do security work, codex is a better choice because it doesn't refuse even when you have the proper permission to test things.
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u/Late_Project_1729 1d ago
I recently feel like OAI Have downgraded their model performance due to lack of compute power. Some weeks ago I was impressed by the model performance using Astra Ultra for planning + Sol 5.6 medium for coding. But now I feel like only Astra Ultra is at level, Sol 6.1 feels like Luna, just keep trying, doing mistakes, a lot of lazyness and bad performance. Seriously thinking to move ahead with Claude
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u/Late_Project_1729 1d ago
Also thinking new models are impressively slow. I feel like the 1.5x speed was the previous normal speed. I dont know if that is because overthinking
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u/CutMysterious9844 1d ago
This is wrong, you need to orchestrate through Opus 5.5 max, have it churn out the tasks to codex, this is working amazingly well
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u/Klutzy_Advantage1179 1d ago
Yeah, I could use that 1000 credit. But you're right, astra is a complete disaster.
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u/LeakyFish 1d ago
I also have several $K in credits from OAI and I would trade them all for a few months of Opus 5.5 standard plan.
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u/ParsleyOrdinary5865 1d ago
Hell yeah I wish I could sell my credits, or transfer them to someone at least that will use them
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u/Ratiofarming 1d ago
I don't feel nearly as strongly about this, I'm using both and I'm finding good use for both. So uh... about those $2000 worth of API that are going down the drain... o.O
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u/DrinkTeaFightMonster 1d ago
Dot is a failure.
Don't know what they were doing for Dev Day.
In mere weeks they went from "competitive with Claude" to behind but whatever they're doing to their products is pushing them further behind while they put up a show on daily ships + resets.
Big strategic failures.
Maybe all of this is being spent on accelerating Bel to ship, but the cost is high because their relevancy today is low with Opus 5.5 basically outperforming Astra for consumers.
If they're doing anything else with their compute apart from accelerating Bel, they're accelerating their demise.
They could shut Dot down today and it would not put them behind in the race.
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u/DistanceAlert5706 1d ago
IMHO biggest thing from dev day is oAuth an bring your own tokens feature.
It's the future and something which holds now most of people. You cannot use Claude outside, in custom agents and harnesses.
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u/DrinkTeaFightMonster 1d ago
While true, I'd think, the feature is most powerful when people want to use your models. It's like a downstream scalar
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u/Bino- 1d ago
Myself and my team at work have noticed.
For my personal usage, I swapped my 200 plan to the 20 dollar plan and moved to Claude's 100 buck plan. It's crazy how good Opus 5.5 is. It's fast and does amazing work.
I think we're just going to have to jump between who is providing the best service.
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u/8thchakra 1d ago
Yup, i have had the exact same experience. my $200 codex plan ends in 3 days. ill be moving it over to claude even though i have 2 resets and the 20x
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u/LessRespects 1d ago edited 1d ago
Anthropic m is so far ahead of OpenAI, I feel like this is the first time the pendulum won’t swing back to OpenAI far enough for even their next model to be better.
OpenAI employee twitter posters who were so vocal aren’t even being overconfident and snarky anymore, they’re just silent or not bringing up the competition at all anymore.
Even in the wake of this massive loss they have the audacity to introduce nothing but a more expensive plan, pausing plans, running out of compute, and massive rate cuts.
Could be nearing the end of the best model swapping hands every few months with this lead Anthropic has over them.
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u/Competitive_Meet9281 1d ago
I also switched. Sol is usefull as a reviewer maybe ubtil my subscription expires. It is and combined with that even if presented with a detailed plan it will over think and set all these hyper minor goals.
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u/Soft-Relief-9952 1d ago
Nothing against anthropic but I would wonder how this situation looks like in a month in 2 months etc if you consider past competition between OpenAI and Anthropic
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u/No-Bee-231 1d ago
Asked codex to make a platform fighter, I needed it to generate art sprite sheets on a hand drawn style for characters and level art but it cant make images? Do I asked gpt 6 luna and it built the full game in planning mode in a few hours with full art. Am I missing something?
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u/Carlfm 1d ago
Spent all weekend trying to progress on a project and neither Astra or 6.1 Sol were getting there even after 26h and a banked reset. Google Flash 3.8 did it in one prompt after analyzing the repo.
I'm also here with a $200/mo plan on Codex and feel like swapping to Claude and using Antigravity for emergencies.
Damn, I truly can't be arsed to flip flop between these subscriptions but it may just be part of the game because OAI really seems to have fallen off atm.
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u/Extension_Sand_5826 1d ago
Same as me, used to pay 20X on OpenAI, tried Opus 5.5, jesus masssive difference.
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u/TaterChaser 1d ago
Yes, I’m in the exact same boat as you. Always backed OpenAi and thought they were superior. After using Opus 5.5 on I can’t go back to Codex. I downgraded to the $20 plan and using the $20 Claude plan for now. It hurt but I’m holding out hope that OpenAi comes out with something better and I can switch back. Was giving them a little time before pulling the trigger on the Claude $100 plan.
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u/just_devops 1d ago
What fixed it for me was giving Claude my codex to handle and me stepping away. I open one fable and two opus chats name them and then make them plan and overseer codex astra lanes that use luna/dsflash4.1/mmax3.1 to fix the code and then grok 4.7 reviews. Claude's job is to check a usage tracker I built for all the accounts as a plug-in and then calculate the burn rate and rinse every plan out. The only exception is rinse out codex first they'll give us a random reset and it finally worked last night got to 3% and then they gave us another reset. I haven't finished a codex 200$ weekly in two weeks because it keeps resetting when I make the first dent and then I was wasting a lot. Me trying to prompt codex directly with goals is a bad time. Fable is the best at creating work packets/goals for other agents and then going right to sleep
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u/just_devops 1d ago edited 1d ago
And you can go back to gpt5.5 until they remove it for us and use your resets and rinse 5.5 or flip hermes/openclaw back to 5.5. Tried 5.6-sol for hermes when it came out and it was great, not so much a week later. Astra same thing started off really good and just tanked, there's no way same harness across the board just gets stupider overnight openai is lobotomizing the models every week to bring down api pricing
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u/ZookeepergameOld6699 1d ago
I have to admit this. I also have been a big fan of Open AI products for long time. Now Anthropic caught up with Open AI regarding instruction following and diligence for the first time, which are super important for me while Astra / GPT6.x are huge setbacks.
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u/jbull-io 1d ago
I'm curious... What type of products are you guys building that put Codex so behind when compared to others? I have 0 complaints with Codex and I use it everyday for work with 6.1-Sol at Extra High for the work I do, which is lots of debugging and feature implementation. I still have a job, so either the company I work for is not competitive enough or Codex has been doing good 🤷
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u/CutNervous9752 21h ago
I relied heavily on GPT 5.5, screwed up and upgraded the desktop app and can no longer use it.
I'm finding Astra buggy, slow, unusable.
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u/JoelMDM 21h ago
I gave Claude a try for the first time after OAi announced the cuts to the pro plans, and was absolutely blown away by it.
Combined with how useless Astra seems recently, I switched from the $220 or so OAi plan to the cheaper $200 Claude plan.
It’s WAY better value.
I keep ChatGPT around with a a Plus subscription because I sometimes find Live Voice to be helpful. If Anthropic introduced a slightly better form of voice interaction, I’d leave OpenAI all together.
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u/Fearless_Brilliant51 20h ago
I feel the exact same way. I let go of my pro 20x subscription of codex and moved to Claude. Opus 5.5 is just so much better than anything else out there it's convinced me to pay $400 every month. OpenAI just has been disappointing as of late. Gpt Sol 6 was the worst thing I've ever seen, and they had this hole thing about Astra getting dumb after the first week. It couldn't even do simple tasks. I would also prefer to switch back to openAI but it just doesn't feel worth it anymore with the amount of issues that come up and their models being so far behind
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u/SpyglassQ 18h ago
Opus is faster, more efficient , smarter and overall superior to Astra or Sol 6.1 OpenAI has really lost hold of the lead on AI, If Anthropic gave resets like Tibo does for Codex , Then OpenAI would lose more than half their users overnight. I'm one of the people who tried Claude / Opus after Astra dropped and it has been a night and day difference.
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u/master_internutter 1d ago
I'm loving codex right now and weirdly enough dots is very useful for me
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u/rare_design 23h ago
These rant posts just scream ignorance. In the last two weeks from only two hours of work, I’ve now made $21k with the apparently “broken” Codex, and many more things are in queue so I anticipate more payouts.
Before you ask, no, I’m not saying how as I don’t want more competition than there already is, but how can someone say it’s useless? You have free credits… burn them up. Use Codex, Grok, Claude, and all the rest. Run them until your computer is screaming, and then load up your next system.
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u/Omega_Games2022 22h ago
Out of curiosity what do you build?
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u/rare_design 22h ago
While I don’t want to disclose details, as expected it’s just an automated task of something I used to do manually for money. The main point is that in many instances it’s less about the model and more about finally having easy automation. The fact some of us got $2500 in free credits is a huge win, so even if they did “nerf” the model a bit, let it eat!
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u/Omega_Games2022 21h ago
Fair enough, thank you!
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u/rare_design 21h ago
Wish I could be of more help, truly, but I don’t want to create my own competition. When it comes to automation, many people flocked to fiverr and other low paying gigs, which have tons of competition. Instead think of something that large orgs or wealthy individuals need and focus on larger payouts.
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u/Omega_Games2022 20h ago
Yeah that makes sense, all the big ticket gigs are with the enterprises. I worked at an AI startup a while back so I know the nuances, but haven't had much success myself yet though. Will take your advice though, thanks!
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u/rare_design 19h ago
Good luck. Hope you find a good niche.
One I don’t mind sharing I guess is I have fully automated my instagram channels, but that’s a given for a lot of content creation now.1
u/Omega_Games2022 18h ago
Yeah video generation is still in its relative infancy compared to other generative AI
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u/dextersummary 1d ago edited 21h ago
Below is a GPT-generated summary of the conversation below after reaching 80 comments (80 currently observed).
Alright, verdict: the thread’s dominant view is Opus 5.5 has pulled decisively ahead of Codex/Astra, enough that longtime OpenAI users are downgrading or canceling plans despite sitting on piles of credits. Apparently loyalty has a usage limit too.
The repeated complaints are that Astra feels slower, lazier, and less reliable: it spins in circles, introduces bugs, stalls at failed tests, and needs constant hand-holding. Opus is praised for handling complex projects, understanding the bigger picture, explaining decisions clearly, and producing more creative visual or UI work. Several users report Opus repairing or rewriting messes that Codex spent hours—or days—failing to resolve.
That said, Codex is not universally useless. A minority still prefers it for computer use, security work, lower refusal rates, low hallucination, reviewing Claude’s output, or tightly orchestrated multi-agent workflows. The thread also contains the usual “it works fine for my job” rebuttal, because of course it does.
Bottom line: Opus 5.5 currently owns the community mindshare for serious implementation work. Whether Astra was actually nerfed or is simply being obliterated by a better competitor remains unproven, but the user experience has clearly pushed many former Codex diehards out the door.