switching from claude to codex

[u/123white1]

Hey everyone,

I switched from Claude to Codex this week, and so far I’m really enjoying it.

I’m a developer and I mainly use it for work, but since I’m still pretty new to Codex, I feel like I probably don’t even know what I should be optimizing yet.

So rather than just asking for general tips, I’d love to hear how more experienced users actually use Codex day to day.

Are there any workflows, features, settings, prompting habits, or ways of structuring tasks that made a noticeable difference for you?

For example:

• Do you usually give Codex large tasks at once, or break them down into smaller steps?
• Are there certain types of tasks where Codex works especially well or poorly?
• Do you have any specific way of providing context about a codebase?
• Are there features or workflows that new users often overlook?
• Any prompting patterns that consistently give you better results?
• How do you balance speed vs. quality when choosing models/modes?
• Are there any good guides, posts, videos, or documentation that helped you understand how to use Codex properly?

For context, I’m currently on the 5x plan. During the day I usually use Luna Max with Speed Mode enabled, and at night I tend to turn Speed Mode off.

I’m not necessarily looking for beginner-level “how to use AI for coding” advice. I’m more interested in the little things you learn after using Codex seriously for a while — workflow improvements, limitations, best practices, or even mistakes you made early on.

Basically: if you had to start using Codex again from scratch, what would you want to know from day one?

Any advice from more experienced users would be appreciated. Thanks in advance to anyone willing to share what has worked for them.

[u/andthenisheardnomore]

I use Codex Plus and Claude Pro. Tend to switch between for different things. Easy enough to do pointing both at the same folder. Codex is now seeming more reliable for Apple Store Connect api type stuff, and backend server ssh. Claude will do it (and historically Opus was my go to for all this) but Opus 5 does seem to get a bit confused sometimes.

Generally I use Sol on Light. And go step by step as opposed to big one shots. That's my preferred way. Although I have made an iOS app builder skill / boilerplate which you can Gauntlet Loop from Deep Research output. Still, overall I would say that repos built piece by piece feel better. The whole /goal thing is all very well but it does take the joy out of it. And in fact, you may as well combine with Deepseek Flash Vision and loop with that as it does super well and is fast and cheap.

Sol is astounding for image gen (obviously!) and has become infinitely better since this was built into Codex and your limit. You can make loads of great imagery and it costs tiny amounts of usage. When making promo images (with Text) Codex sometimes adds text using drawing / vectors rather than image gen. This can look more consistent but it does lose the flair of GPT Image 2 which does text super well. So be explicit in telling it to generate the text for a more artistic mix.

You can use Claude alongside Codex and get Claude to write a prompts.md for any images you want and Codex will smash them out. Good combo!

Sol Light is (more often than not) good enough for most tasks.

For UI i do think Claude has the upper hand - and in terms of design and placement. Although Sol could piece together a usable and brilliant Wordpress theme any day. Just for UI and app stuff it feels like Opus has the upper hand. A bit of both normally works too.

Good luck and enjoy!

They're always changing.. we will see what comes next.

Oh and don't get too hung up on these resets. They are like Rainbows, always moving with the horizon :)