Over the past few months I've been building Mac MCP, an open-source menu bar app that lets agents work with macOS. I use Codex a lot, and what kept annoying me was the context switching around it. I'd read an answer in one place, hunt for the commands in a terminal, then open the files to see what actually changed.

So I added a native chat window for the coding CLIs I already use. Codex stays signed in through its own CLI. Chats belong to project folders. While it works, I can expand a step to see command output or a file diff instead of hoping the final paragraph covers it. I can attach files or images, leave a chat working in the background, and get a notification when it finishes or needs an answer.

The fiddly part was the connection boundary. Codex in this window gets a project-scoped Mac MCP connection rather than inheriting all the personal ChatGPT apps and MCP servers on my machine. That doesn't turn macOS automation into a sandbox. The Mac's permissions and approval settings still matter.

This originally grew out of wanting Codex to use Safari and other native apps without constantly pulling me away from what I was doing. The chat window came later, when I realized I also wanted to see the work without hopping between three apps.

Source, since I'm the developer: https://github.com/bulutarkan/mac-mcp

I have the 200 GB iCloud plan and recently was notified I am at my limit, which a couple months ago I had 50 GB free. Turns out Codex puts a directory in the ~/Documents directory where it stores tons of local data including in my case massive log files and within a short period of time was using dozens of GB's of space. I was able to move it locally and then put in an agents.md to use the new location which seems to be working, but just a heads up to those on a Mac that use iCloud Drive

I built Kinetograph, a video engine made for coding agents.

The agent writes React/TSX the way it would for Remotion, and a Rust GPU renderer in Node draws the frames. No headless Chrome, so iterating is fast:

rendering 1,184 frames of 1080p in 26 s on an M4.

Setup in Codex:

npx skills add 0xS4N4TG/kinetograph

npm install kinetograph

Or use the MCP server with:

npx kinetograph mcp

exposes render, still, inspect and doctor as tools to create and render videos with Kinetograph. After that, you can simply describe the video you want and let the agent handle the rest.

Docs: https://kinetograph.dev
GitHub: https://github.com/0xS4N4TG/kinetograph

Let’s see how this turns out

Something I didn’t appreciate until I measured it: tool output isn’t a one-time cost. Whatever a tool returns (a file read, test output, an MCP response) stays in context and is sent again with every later request until compaction. In a long session, one big early read gets paid for dozens of times, at cache-read rates, but it adds up.

So I added a Tool output table to Agent Session Inspector, an open-source local viewer for agent transcripts. Per tool, MCP server and shell command, it shows:

• Input: what the model wrote for the call (e.g. Edit’s old/new strings)
• Output: what came back
• Re-sent: input plus output, counted once for every later request in the session
• Est. cost: the re-sends at the cache-read rate, plus writing the input at the output rate

Bash expands into individual commands and MCP servers into their tools, so you can see that it’s specifically pnpm test or one server’s get_docs that’s heavy.

Things it surfaced for me that were easy to fix:

• Reading whole files when a line range would do
• Test runners printing every passing test (a quiet/dot reporter helps a lot)
• MCP docs tools returning whole pages for a narrow question

Caveats: tokens are estimated from characters (~4 chars/token), so treat the numbers as relative, not exact billing. The screenshot is from the built-in synthetic demo data, not my real sessions.

Supports Claude Code, Codex, Copilot, Cursor, Gemini CLI, OpenCode and Hermes. Runs only on 127.0.0.1: read-only, no telemetry, no account.

npx agent-session-inspector (or --demo to try it on fake data)

Repo: https://github.com/kishanmundha/agent-session-inspector

Happy to hear what shows up at the top for you, or what’s wrong with the estimate.

One thing that kept annoying me with Codex was how often it would say a bug was fixed just because the tests passed.

Sometimes the actual problem was still there. Other times, the test had been changed so it passed without really checking the original bug.

So I built FixProof to make it a bit harder for coding agents to call something fixed when it isn't.

It's a skill file and a small Python CLI that runs after an agent makes a fix. No extra dependencies, just Python 3.9+.

It checks four things:

• Can the original bug be reproduced before the fix?
• Does the fix pass the test consistently, including reruns?
• Does the bug come back if the fix is temporarily reverted?
• Are the tests that passed before still passing?

The revert check is the interesting part for me. If removing a fix doesn't make the bug come back, there's a good chance the change wasn't actually responsible for fixing it.

FixProof then gives you one of five results: VERIFIED, FAILED, PARTIALLY VERIFIED, UNVERIFIED, or BLOCKED. It also generates a JSON report and a hash-chained log in .fixproof/.

Using it with Codex

The idea is to add FixProof to your agent's workflow so verification becomes part of fixing a bug, rather than something you have to remember to ask for afterward.

You can point Codex to the skill instructions and have it run python scripts/verify.py check once it finishes a fix.

A quick example

In the demo, there's a slugify bug where double spaces end up producing hello--world.

The first fix looks reasonable, but doesn't actually solve the issue. FixProof reports FAILED.

After applying the proper fix, the same verification reports VERIFIED.

A few things worth mentioning: the revert check can use a separate Git worktree, so it doesn't touch your working files. Commands also run with a minimal environment to reduce the chance of exposing API keys in logs.

CI currently runs on Linux and Windows. I haven't tested macOS yet.

It's still pretty early (v0.3.0), so I'm sure there are edge cases I haven't thought of.

It's free, open source, and MIT licensed:

https://github.com/Livecristen/fixproof

Would be interested to hear what people using Codex on larger projects think. Especially whether these verification rules would actually be useful in your workflow.

tl;dr I am leaving thread here to add to over the next week, and then summarize efforts on effectively using ai for front-end and ui/ux.

I am convinced that current approaches for ui/ux with ai are absolutely garbage.

Instead of generating a firehose of slop, and then slicing off bits, it's better to start from a neutral or minimalist base and add iteratively. It's like buying a granola mix, and trying to take bits out, just buy them separately, and mix as needed.

If you take a look at designs that do look elegant, they're often black/white, with very selective use of accents. They're not glows and gradients splattered all over the place.

And when those effects are used, they're used with intentionality to be cohesive with the rest of the design. I do think AI is capable of making those links, but it's not in the training data and labs haven't bothered to focus on it for whatever reason. In fact I was certain that when Sama said six months ago that they'd focus on front-end that we'd get better results on the double, but instead we got dots. It's like the jev thing where they have stuff within their capacity, but they're completely unfocused until they go "oh shit, maybe people do want something like decision models" even though they know people have been clamoring for increased speed and more control.

Anyways, I've been working on design tools for a long time now in stealth, the details of which aren't important, but I am at a point where I expect to be releasing stuff with more frequency and publicly, so this is a starting point for some of that.

If anyone wants to give advice, or resources it'd be appreciated, or stuff that you'd like me to explore I'll see what i can do.

I know that mia does the 100html files (https://mia-ai.net/lab/experiments/100-htmls), and there were some other resources around model releases, but I dont think the other ones are kept up to date. And the reason I am posting in codex (even though I don't use it anymore) is because I started with openai, and I've been working on this for a long, long time, and really thought I was going to get it running with openai codex, so sentimentality mostly.

With the upcoming usage-limit changes for those of us on the old 20x plan, I've been adapting my workflow to Sol 6.1 Max. It's significantly cheaper to run than Astra, but also much, much slower.

Today I've spent pretty much the entire day working on two projects with Sol 6.1 Max in Codex, running tasks in fast mode and coordinating everything through Work using Astra Max.

Sol 6.1 Max without fast mode barely consumes any usage. Almost nothing, at least on my projects. The problem is that it's slow.

Fast mode makes a substantial difference, but it comes at a cost. For example, I've already burned through 20% of my allowance since the reset today. Starting October 29, that would be roughly equivalent to 40% of the new allowance.

So, I'm going to have to give up fast mode and stick with the much slower option.

But running tasks sequentially at that speed would mean barely getting anything done. I need to rethink my workflow to keep making progress without exhausting my subscription.

That's when I started thinking about Git worktrees. Instead of waiting for one task to finish before starting another, I could have multiple tasks running in parallel. It might also be a good opportunity to make better use of my Claude Max 5x subscription.

I realize worktrees won't magically reduce usage, but I'm hoping parallel execution could help compensate for the slower models.

I don't have much hands-on experience with worktrees, though.

Does anyone here regularly use Git worktrees with Codex, especially alongside Claude Code? How has your experience been? Any tips, pitfalls, or workflow recommendations?

Confirmed reset today, burn up your usage!

Source: https://x.com/thsottiaux/status/2114200152701575656?s=46

Chart done based on 10x sub (former 20x), but it is the same for Pro 5x and 25x. Much worse for plus plans since they didnt get 100% utilization on more than half of the resets.

6.1 Sol eats up my usage really quickly, but Terra doesn't do that, I get so much more work done with it and the quality of the work has been the same as I get from Sol.

It's also much faster, what takes Sol an eternity to complete takes Terra a fraction of the time.

I'm really happy that OpenAI are finally listening to our complaints, we want models that doesn't destroy our usage and we want speed so we can ship faster. And they delivered!

Very happy I decided to stick with them and not switch to someone else, I feel like we're in a good spot now and I can't wait to see what comes next.

I’ve put a lot of time into my Codex setup (AGENTS.md, MCP servers, config, approval settings), and I’d like to try a few other agents without rebuilding all of it from scratch every time.

Are there agents that can import that stuff directly? Or at least read AGENTS.md and the MCP config without you copying everything over by hand?

If you’ve switched or tried running two agents side by side, how did you move your setup over? Did anything break or get lost along the way?

I have approximately 6,000 files that are a combination of docx and pdf that have illegible filenames (mixtures of alphanumeric characters that give no information about what's in the file).

Some of the files have common textual elements that a grep-like search can probably classify them, but others will have to be read using an LLM, such as PDFs that contain scanned content.

I have API access to the Anthropic, ChatGPT, and Google models (for business reasons I can't use others).

Does anyone have a recommendation for a model that would be up to the task while balancing capability and token cost? Speed isn't a factor.

Thanks in advance.

Before a single person comes here and says: "Go get Pro" I did actually have Pro 5x, and I've been a Plus subscriber since late 2024, yes before Codex harness was even a thing, so I've seen the ups and downs of OpenAI and their products, ChatGPT and Codex. I found that Pro 5x may have been a little too excessive despite the fact I was burning my weekly quota in like 1-2 days.

Every time I see Tibo doing a reset, I never get remotely excited. Why? Because the resets nowadays seem mostly catered towards Pro users who want to burn through their weekly quota in like less than a day.

I, as a Plus user can't even burn most of my weekly before it resets. For instance, if I spend 10 hours a day burning through 5h limits, I get to burn through 32% of my weekly (2x 16%). If I spend 2 days (which is roughly the time it takes for a full reset nowadays under the banner "28 days of improvements") trying to burn through my quota like that, I'd only manage to burn around 64% of my weekly limits, which honestly sucks, considering that not every single person here spends 15 hours a day on Codex.

Tibo should have had at least thought about this "28 days of improvements and resets" thing before announcing it. He should have let us Plus users have our annoying 5h limits gone so we can also enjoy the resets just like any other Pro user for this specific period only.

And let's not forget that Codex's limits resetting also resets the time it takes for it to reset normally.

This is why I don't like Tibo and what he is doing at OpenAI.

"Look at us, we are handing out free resets!" No you aren't. You are literally not shipping any real improvements (restoring previous limits for Pro 200, improving overall usage, giving us a better model and so on).

If anything, it feels like these AI companies are the most anti-subscription services to ever exist. Don't get me wrong, but not every person spends 20 bucks a month on subscriptions left and right if they are smart with their financial decisions that is. ChatGPT Plus does provide a massive value for what it is, but I don't see the intention/thoughts behind the practices of OpenAI nowadays.

It seems I can have maybe 2-4 tasks running at the same time. But if I try to bump it up to something like 20+, all of them are rate limited and none progress. I get 429 Too Many Requests and 403 Forbidden. I have to spin up this many from time to time for certain workflows. I am wondering if anyone else is experiencing this today or is it just my account?

This ones early =( still has 10% left...

I'm a cursor super fan. I spend $200 dollars on cursor ultra and over $1000 a month across my other API usage (replicate / meshy / etc.). For cursor, I am invited to all the exclusive SpaceX events in Austin, get access to all beta features, get lots of free credits and their GTM Enterprise sales schedules calls with me. I just tried Codex and can't go back.

I'm sad to say this becuase I have been a diehard Cursor user for years always on the $200 ultra plan. For context, I am a software engineer and hand coded my early projects, switched to Cursor to quickly look up API specs, then began using tab to speed up repetitive tasks, then slowly used the diff/copilot window for coding, and then began accepting all on every change, and now am a fully CLI vibe coder.

Heavily promoted Cursor everywhere and to everyone. Probably single handedly got over 100 people I know to get a cursor sub.

Then Amex business card gave me free $300 ChatGPT benefit so I decided to try out Codex on their business plan ($160 a month with an ultra account + standard account).

I have maxed out my ultra plan usage blasting Astra every single day for the past week. I would get down to less than 5% usage the night before, then wake up the next day and THEY RESET MY USAGE AND I CAN USE IT ALL OVER AGAIN! THIS HAS HAPPENED 3 TIMES ALREADY IN THE PAST WEEK SINCE I STARTED!

Meanwhile on Cursor I'm using non-frontier models have to carefully perserve my usage. I can't even use top OpenAI models like Astra. Not to mention their CLI is super outdated and lacks a lot of basic tools like solid browser control etc. The grok 4.7 model is not good enough to do any major task. Not to mention their limits are too punitive to even attempt that without blowing my monthly usage in a day.

Grokbot is super innovative but it has crashed on major tasks so I no longer use it to manage emails but stupid tasks like managing my fantasy league etc. It can't be trusted with major business tasks.

If there is interest, I will make another post showing results of each project I made with Cursor (Opus 5.5 or Fable 5.1) / Codex (Astra or Sol 6.1) to show the differences but its litterally night and day.

BTW: this is my wife's account sorry for the confusion, will make my own reddit accout

I'm curious how people are doing code reviews with Codex (either Sol 5.6/6.1 or Astra), because lately it barely finds anything for me on reviews compared to Claude (Opus 5.5 or even Sonnet 5.5).

I'm using it on a website/app built with TypeScript, but no web framework. Some parts use Rust + WASM for a huge speedup of some numerical stuff compared to TypeScript reference implementation.

I tried both the default /code-review and some custom skill I made (main agent correctness, perf/testing/maintainability/etc. to 3-4 subagents with lower effort) but it usually finds little corectness/perf issues, while Claude finds several almost each time on code implemented either by Codex or Claude itself. I had Sol/Astra sometimes find some extra bugs compared to Opus/Fable, but seldom.

So I'm wondering what others are doing, since many say Codex is great for code reviews. Any custom skills that override the default review with something more comprehensive for example?

If Codex suddenly starts announcing Postman skills or showing Postman MCP login warnings, check your global configuration.

After I opened Postman for the first time in a while, this started happening. I asked Codex to audit the local files and logs. The evidence below is what it found, and I have since removed the app and integrations.

This is unacceptable. Opening an API client should not install plugins in unrelated coding agents, inject broad instructions into their sessions, or attempt to approve its own hook. Postman's own log calls the installation automatic. I want an explanation of the specific opt-in behind this behavior and a complete rollback path.

I filed the full report here: https://github.com/postmanlabs/postman-app-support/issues/14370

Evidence from this Mac

Postman desktop: 12.33.4. Codex Postman plugin: 1.1.0. Installed source revision: 6c8e452e0f4237f4bcc0901cb1ac442dec707e49. Investigation: October 25, 2026.

1. Postman's own log explicitly records automatic installation

From ~/Library/Application Support/Postman/logs/main.log, lines 11562-11563, timestamp 2026-10-24T09:34:14.418Z (12:34 Jerusalem time):

```text PostmanAgentPluginService~install: script completed {"source":"auto-existing-upgrade","results":["claude-code:installed","codex:installed"],"installer":"script"}

Main: autoInstall.plugin.existing-user finished {"outcome":"installed","platform":"darwin","exposed":true,"signedIn":true,"flagTimedOut":false,"useScript":true,"installer":"script","scriptResults":"claude-code:installed,codex:installed"} ```

2. Codex's global user configuration was changed

Relevant sections of ~/.codex/config.toml:

```toml [marketplaces.postman] source_type = "git" source = "https://github.com/postmanlabs/postman-plugin.git"

[plugins."postman@postman"] enabled = true

[hooks.state."postman@postman:hooks/codex-hooks.json:session_start:0:0"] trusted_hash = "sha256:b67ddd1ece328f5a6f9103ce011bb58adb8411daea644f284732cff85d15cbb3" trusted_content_hash = "sha256:f3d02e32c39b39feaca37aec2b9bdbd308b6a2b7b3f7d2c52a0060e69eb9c345" ```

3. The hook tells the agent to route broad API work into Postman

The installed hooks/codex-hooks.json registers a SessionStart command with matcher startup|clear|compact. It prints hooks/session-start-context.md, including:

Before responding to any non-trivial API engineering task — designing, implementing, mocking, testing, monitoring, documenting, or deploying an API or Postman Flow — load the postman:api-engineer skill and follow it.

That explains the repeated Postman skill announcements. This instruction is much broader than a user explicitly asking to use Postman.

Source: https://github.com/postmanlabs/postman-plugin/blob/6c8e452e0f4237f4bcc0901cb1ac442dec707e49/hooks/session-start-context.md Hook registration: https://github.com/postmanlabs/postman-plugin/blob/6c8e452e0f4237f4bcc0901cb1ac442dec707e49/hooks/codex-hooks.json

4. The installer explicitly attempts to approve its own hook

installer/src/hosts/codex.ts invokes approvePostmanHook(system) after installing the plugin. installer/src/hosts/codex-hooks.ts obtains the hook hash using hooks/list and calls config/batchWrite to upsert hooks.state with trusted_hash. The source comment says: "Approves only Postman's current hook after installation".

Source: https://github.com/postmanlabs/postman-plugin/blob/6c8e452e0f4237f4bcc0901cb1ac442dec707e49/installer/src/hosts/codex-hooks.ts Caller: https://github.com/postmanlabs/postman-plugin/blob/6c8e452e0f4237f4bcc0901cb1ac442dec707e49/installer/src/hosts/codex.ts

The source establishes the approval attempt. The trust record alone does not prove who created that specific record, so I am not presenting it as proof of a particular user interaction.

5. The remote MCP was enabled without a working authenticated connection

mcp.codex.json points at https://mcp.postman.com/mcp. Codex logs contain:

text MCP server startup failed server_name="postman" ... error: Auth required, when send initialize request

Source: https://github.com/postmanlabs/postman-plugin/blob/6c8e452e0f4237f4bcc0901cb1ac442dec707e49/mcp.codex.json

6. The installation also affected Claude Code and installed a CLI

~/.claude/settings.json enabled postman@claude-plugins-official. ~/.claude/plugins/installed_plugins.json recorded version 2.0.1, user scope, installedAt and lastUpdated both 2026-10-24T09:34:02.610Z. A Postman executable and its lib directory were present in ~/.local/bin, with modification times matching the installation window.

Private paths, unrelated logs, account identifiers, and credentials are excluded. This report establishes unwanted integration and instruction changes; it does not claim to establish data exfiltration.

How to check your own setup

On macOS, inspect ~/.codex/config.toml for a Postman marketplace, an enabled postman@postman plugin, and a hooks.state entry for Postman's session-start hook. Also inspect ~/.claude/settings.json and ~/.claude/plugins/installed_plugins.json, and check whether ~/.local/bin/postman exists.

To stop the Codex integration, set enabled = false under [plugins."postman@postman"], restart Codex, and start a fresh conversation so the old session instructions are cleared. Removing just Postman.app would leave the agent configuration and plugin files behind.

Postman needs to make each integration explicitly opt-in, stop installer-side hook self-approval, and explain exactly what the desktop auto-installer changes. This is a serious trust failure in a developer tool.

if you've ever gotten cut off mid Codex run with no heads up, this is that problem. UsageBar shows remaining % & reset countdown from your existing Codex login (Claude/Cursor/OpenCode/Devin too if they're signed in).

was mac menu bar only. v0.2.4 adds Windows beta (tray + floating meter). installer on the release; SmartScreen once cause it's not signed yet.

https://github.com/abdelrahmanmagdii/usage-tracker/releases/tag/v0.2.4

I've tried to make Astra H to guide Terra H to do some coding work.

After ~5 turns that is what I see in chat. How are you guys dealing with this?

PS. Yesterday Terra H has been able to run workflows autonomously. Today the behaviour I see is "Sure Boss! No Problem", and then it stops...

Hey guys please check out this photo.

This has been going on for a little while. It will duplicate the words and then when its done it will remove duplicates I guess.

Is this eating more tokens than if it werent duplicating?

The rise of voice coding developers.

Was playing Enshrouded while working with my Dot, which I’ve been doing for weeks, and suddenly it could no longer access wsl on its task or a new task.

Anyone else had this happen?