Developer Michele Rossi has been testing OpenAI’s Codex over the past two weeks and reports markedly better output than the earlier Claude Code model. He finds Codex faster on most prompts and more disciplined, changing only the lines explicitly requested. Pricing for the 20× Max tier matches Claude Code, making performance the key differentiator for daily development.

Rossi’s workflow adds several tweaks to coax the model’s potential. He runs Codex in fast mode, toggles “high thinking” in plan mode, and grants access to Playwright MCP so the agent can interact with a browser and validate its own changes. Enabling YOLO mode lets the model act across the entire project folder, a safety net he says is safely acceptable given proper infrastructure in production environments.

A practical advantage emerges for OpenAI’s subscription: it powers OpenClaw bots, whereas Claude Code no longer permits that use. Rossi estimates a $200 yearly spend unlocks a capable, frontier‑level model for bot automation without breaking the bank. Despite missing a native work‑tree command, he scripts a simple alias to generate temporary worktrees, keeping multi‑repo work smooth.