Mahnoor Faisal writes that OpenAI Codex tends to over-engineer simple tasks by refactoring surrounding code, adding abstractions and defensive guards not requested, and she fixes this by appending a single boundary line to every prompt telling it to make the smallest change that fully solves the task and not add extras unless strictly required.
- The same one-line tweak previously improved prompts for Claude, Claude Code, NotebookLM and ChatGPT
- Over-scoping complaints are common on Reddit, especially with GPT-5.6 Sol
- OpenAI'''s focus on long-running autonomous work makes the model eager to find adjacent improvements
>"Make the smallest change that fully solves the task. Do not add abstractions, fallbacks, defensive guards, refactors, or features unless they are strictly required.”
- The same one-line tweak previously improved prompts for Claude, Claude Code, NotebookLM and ChatGPT
- Over-scoping complaints are common on Reddit, especially with GPT-5.6 Sol
- OpenAI'''s focus on long-running autonomous work makes the model eager to find adjacent improvements
>"Make the smallest change that fully solves the task. Do not add abstractions, fallbacks, defensive guards, refactors, or features unless they are strictly required.”
Unusually detailed post explains how OpenAI handles the Codex agent loop. The article dives into the technical aspects of OpenAI's Codex CLI coding agent, including the agent loop, prompt construction, caching, and context window management.
The article details how their Codex CLI coding agent functions. OpenAI engineer Michael Bolin explains the "agent loop" – the process by which the AI receives user input, generates code, runs tests, and iterates with human supervision.
* **Agent Loop Mechanics:** The agent builds prompts with prioritized components (system, developer, user, assistant) and sends them to OpenAI’s Responses API.
* **Prompt Management:** The system handles growing prompt lengths (quadratic growth) through caching, compaction, and a stateless API design (allowing for "Zero Data Retention"). Cache misses can significantly impact performance.
* **Context Window:** Codex automatically compacts conversations to stay within the AI model's context window.
* **Open Source Focus:** OpenAI open-sources the CLI client for Codex, unlike ChatGPT, suggesting a different approach to development and transparency for coding tools.
* **Challenges Acknowledged:** The article doesn't shy away from the engineering challenges, like performance issues and bugs encountered during development.
* **Future Coverage:** Bolin plans to release further posts detailing the CLI’s architecture, tool implementation, and sandboxing model.
The article details how their Codex CLI coding agent functions. OpenAI engineer Michael Bolin explains the "agent loop" – the process by which the AI receives user input, generates code, runs tests, and iterates with human supervision.
* **Agent Loop Mechanics:** The agent builds prompts with prioritized components (system, developer, user, assistant) and sends them to OpenAI’s Responses API.
* **Prompt Management:** The system handles growing prompt lengths (quadratic growth) through caching, compaction, and a stateless API design (allowing for "Zero Data Retention"). Cache misses can significantly impact performance.
* **Context Window:** Codex automatically compacts conversations to stay within the AI model's context window.
* **Open Source Focus:** OpenAI open-sources the CLI client for Codex, unlike ChatGPT, suggesting a different approach to development and transparency for coding tools.
* **Challenges Acknowledged:** The article doesn't shy away from the engineering challenges, like performance issues and bugs encountered during development.
* **Future Coverage:** Bolin plans to release further posts detailing the CLI’s architecture, tool implementation, and sandboxing model.
This article provides a practical guide to JSON prompting for Large Language Models (LLMs), demonstrating how structuring prompts with JSON improves consistency, accuracy, and scalability. It includes Python coding examples comparing free-form and JSON prompts, and provides access to full code notebooks.
This article details new prompting techniques for ChatGPT-4.1, emphasizing structured prompts, precise delimiting, agent creation, long context handling, and chain-of-thought prompting to achieve better results.
