Seth Lazar pitches a model-agnostic Codex rival that works across machines and iPhone, trading data for subsidies
sethlazar · x · 2026-09-06
Philosopher Seth Lazar outlined a concrete product idea for breaking free of OpenAI lock-in:
- The product: build a coding agent matching Codex at working across multiple machines (including smooth iPhone use) that is genuinely model-agnostic. He thinks this isn't that hard — the key challenges are cross-device workflow and raw agent performance.
- The business model: match OpenAI's subscription subsidy, but let developers train on your data in exchange. He says for many workflows he'd like developers to train on his data so they do his jobs better, while keeping full privacy for sensitive things.
- Current setup: he already runs this workflow via codex router, but long-term would rather not depend on ChatGPT at all.
A concrete direction for developers seeking vendor-agnostic, phone-first agent tooling.
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