"Just Ask Codex": Inside OpenAI's Own Working Culture | Romain Huet, OpenAI

What happens when the best engineers at OpenAI stop writing code by hand? How does a coding tool turn into a command center for agents that work for days without you in the loop? And why has Germany quietly become one of OpenAI's top five markets for Codex? In this episode of AI to the DNA, the podcast for everyone who wants to really understand and apply AI, I sit down with Romain Huet, Head of Developer Experience at OpenAI and one of the key people behind Codex. We meet in Paris at OpenAI's local office, right after the team shipped GPT 5.5 and a wave of new Codex capabilities. Romain previously led product at Stripe and is now building the layer where developers, and increasingly everyone else, meet the models. Höre den Podcast auch auf deiner Lieblings Podcast Plattform: https://attd.fm/play We talk about why Codex started as a coding tool, why it became something much bigger, and how OpenAI's own teams, from engineering to finance, now use it as their daily working surface. Romain explains why the jump from GPT 5.2 to 5.3 Codex was the real turning point, and what it means that even the best engineers no longer write code by hand. From there we go deep into the architecture behind it: the open-source Codex harness, the layer that connects models, tools, files and your computer. We discuss what a harness actually is, why OpenAI made it public, and why prompt engineering as we knew it is essentially gone. We also dig into the harder questions, sandboxing, computer use, prompt injection, and how the new code review capabilities of GPT 5.5 are already preventing real production incidents at companies like Datadog. Finally, Romain walks us through what excites him most right now: /goal, the command that lets Codex relentlessly pursue an ambitious goal across days of uninterrupted work. We close on a simple but uncomfortable insight: the models are so good now that the real bottleneck has become our own imagination. I'm Christoph Magnussen and at AI to the DNA, I'm not just asking how to use AI. I’m asking why it works the way it does. This podcast is for everyone who wants to move beyond tool-tourism and master the real craft of AI: Learning to think, work, and build side by side with intelligent systems! __________________________ 00:00 Intro 01:34 Welcome to Paris: Tool Tourists vs. Champions League 02:35 The Codex Turning Point: From 5.2 to Days of Uninterrupted Work 05:53 Codex Without the Word "Code": Explaining It to Mittelstand 08:12 Inside OpenAI: From Model Speed to "Just Ask Codex" 12:50 From Chatbot to Harness: What Has Actually Changed 16:57 Why OpenAI Open-Sourced the Codex Harness 18:36 The End of Prompt Engineering: Just Talk to Codex 22:39 Monorepos: How Google, OpenAI and Blackboat Organize Code 25:23 Slack, Agent Signatures and the FTE Question 28:16 Trust and Sandboxing: How Codex Asks for Permission 32:22 Computer Use: When the Agent Takes Over Your Mac 34:27 The Numbers: 8x Codex Growth, Germany at 10x 36:48 Beyond Code: Onboarding Codex for Non-Developers 38:36 ChatGPT vs. Codex: One Model, One Harness, Two Audiences 43:05 Security: From Prompt Injection to Daybreak 49:22 Sparkle of AGI: /goal – Codex's Most Ambitious Mode 54:11 Still Too Shy: The Final Take and Goodbye __________________________ Exklusive Insights & Behind the Scenes:   / christophmagnussen     / christophmagnussen     / christophmagnussen   🚀 Mein Unternehmen Blackboat - Work Faster Together: https://www.blackboat.com/ 🎙️ Podcast: https://attd.fm 💌 Newsletter: https://blackboat.com/newsletter 🎤✨ Als Speaker anfragen: https://www.christophmagnussen.de/ __________________________ "Creator at heart, Blackboat CEO by profession." So lässt sich sehr gut in einem Satz sagen, was mich umtreibt. Seit über 20 Jahren spreche ich mit Menschen darüber, wie sich die Arbeitswelt für sie geändert hat und was sich weiter ändern muss. Dabei interessiert mich immer die Schnittstelle zwischen Mensch und Technologie. Mit Hilfe neuer Technologien, wie AI und digitalen Tools sind wir in der Lage, Arbeit anders zu organisieren und völlig neu zu denken. Und das ist überfällig. Nennt es New Work, New Workforce, Future of Work oder einfach nur "Arbeit". Für mich ist es der beste Job der Welt und hier findet ihr meine aktuellen Youtube Videos ✊ __________________________