How Codex Happened: Inside OpenAI's coding comeback from failed launch to ChatGPT centerpiece
danshipper · x · 2026-11-05
Dan Shipper, CEO of Every, publishes a deep retrospective on OpenAI's comeback in AI coding.
- He was at OpenAI's Mission Bay office the night before the GPT-5 launch in summer 2025; Every had early access a month prior and ran real-work tests for their Vibe Check review.
- The team's reaction to Codex on GPT-5 was muted: the earlier cloud version had failed to find product-market fit, and the team was pivoting to a terminal-based local version.
- Today Codex is the centerpiece of OpenAI's comeback, having 'swallowed ChatGPT from the inside' and become the foundation for everything the company builds next.
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