ChatGPT Work and Codex run on the same shared agent harness, differing only in opinionated UX choices about Git state visibility, diff presentation, and sandboxing defaults.
Akshay Nathan clarifies that Codex and ChatGPT Work share one harness—improvements to plugins, computer use, and artifacts benefit both. The differences are UX-driven: Codex surfaces Git diffs and file edits more explicitly and has different sandbox defaults, while Work abstracts those details for a broader audience. ✦ AI generated
Akshay Nathan · Latent Space · 2026-07-28 · original ↗
plays this moment only · 9:49 — 10:30
“Is the Codex harness and the ChatGPT Work harness the same? Is it just UI affordances, or are there prompt level or even deeper differences?”
So the harness is the same. The harness is shared. In both of the products, we made improvements to the harness to make it good for knowledge work, especially as it relates to plugins or computer use or artifacts. You get that power regardless of which experience you're in. On the UX side, there's opinionated takes that we have when you're in Codex mode, what the UX should be how the UX should behave, and some stuff around the sandbox like I mentioned, but the underlying harness and capabilities should be the same.
verbatim transcript · starts at 9:49
Shared Harness, Different UX: Codex vs. Work
Akshay Nathan [00:09:49]: So the harness is the same. The harness is shared. on In both of the products, we made improvements to the harness to make it good for knowledge work, especially as it relates to plug-ins or computer use or artifacts. You get that power regardless of which experience you’re in. On the UX side, there’s opinionated takes that we have when you’re in Codex mode, what the UX should be how the UX should behave, and some stuff around the sandbox like I mentioned, but the underlying harness and capabilities should be the same.
Swyx [00:10:16]: I’m just kinda curious. Maybe we can, -- Is there a query that we can run that would look different in the two modes?
Akshay Nathan [00:10:23]: Yeah. I tried to create, like ask it to create, like, a retirement calculator spreadsheet or something, in both modes. And then in Codex mode, you might have to be in a repo for this, but you’ll see, like, the diffs of, like, the sheet that it’s creating and stuff like that, and the file edits. But in Work you won’t be able to see that.