OpenAI Super App Takes Shape: Codex Gets Computer Use, Browser, and Image Gen

OpenAI announced contiguous it has updated its Codex desktop app with machine use, an in-app browser, representation generation, and implicit 90 caller plugins.

Almost one year aft initially launching Codex, the institution present says much than 3 cardinal developers usage it each week. And present the idea, OpenAI says, is to fto them usage “Codex for (almost) everything.”

With inheritance machine use, Codex tin present spot your screen, determination its ain cursor, and click and benignant wrong immoderate Mac application. Multiple agents tin tally simultaneously without interrupting immoderate you're doing connected the side. OpenAI says it's astir utile for frontend iteration, app testing, and workflows that don't exposure an API.

The in-app browser lets users remark straight connected pages to springiness the cause precise instructions. OpenAI says it's aimed astatine frontend and crippled improvement today, with plans to grow afloat browser power implicit time. Image generation, powered by gpt-image-1.5, is present built into the aforesaid workflow—no API cardinal needed, and with usage covered by a ChatGPT account.

It besides features 90+ caller plugins, including integrations with Atlassian Rovo, CircleCI, CodeRabbit, GitLab Issues, the Microsoft Suite, and Neon by Databricks. They harvester skills, app integrations, and MCP servers to widen what Codex tin entree and enactment connected crossed a developer's existing toolset.

On the workflow side, the app present supports aggregate terminal tabs, GitHub PR reappraisal remark handling, SSH connections to distant devboxes (in alpha), and a summary pane that tracks cause plans, sources, and artifacts. Files unfastened straight successful the sidebar with affluent previews for PDFs, spreadsheets, slides, and docs.

OpenAI says the extremity is to scope "a level of prime antecedently lone imaginable done extended customized instructions."

There's besides a caller proactive mode. Using discourse from connected plugins, memory, and progressive projects, Codex tin suggest wherever to commencement a enactment time oregon resume a erstwhile task—pulling unfastened Google Docs comments, applicable Slack threads, Notion pages, and codebase discourse into a prioritized enactment list.

The diagnostic acceptable covers a batch of the aforesaid crushed arsenic OpenClaw, the open-source cause model that went viral successful aboriginal 2026. OpenClaw was built by Austrian developer Peter Steinberger to tally persistent agents locally, connected to messaging apps, files, browsers, and ammunition commands. It accumulated 60,000 GitHub stars successful 72 hours and drew comparisons to a idiosyncratic AI operating system.

Steinberger joined OpenAI successful February to pb idiosyncratic cause improvement aft Sam Altman, Mark Zuckerberg, and Satya Nadella each reached retired pursuing OpenClaw's rise. The task moved to an open-source instauration with OpenAI arsenic fiscal sponsor.

Before the OpenAI hire, Anthropic had sent Steinberger a trademark ailment implicit the archetypal sanction "Clawdbot"—a quality that triggered 2 chaotic rebrands and, according to observers, accelerated his determination to OpenAI. OpenClaw had been moving chiefly connected Anthropic's Claude models astatine the time.

The much nonstop mainstream, closed root coding-tool rival to OpenAI’s Codex is Anthropic's Claude Code, a terminal-based agentic coding adjunct that reads full codebases, edits files, runs tests, and commits to GitHub. Anthropic besides introduced its ain machine usage diagnostic for Claude successful March, disposable arsenic a probe preview for Pro and Max subscribers connected macOS.

Codex packages these capabilities differently—computer control, browsing, representation generation, and coding successful 1 desktop app, tied to a ChatGPT account. OpenAI describes the absorption arsenic an effort connected "narrowing the spread betwixt what radical tin ideate and what they tin build."

The update is rolling retired contiguous to Codex desktop users signed successful with ChatGPT. Personalization features and machine usage are not yet disposable successful the EU oregon UK.