134: OpenAI's Free Codex App, Building RSS Reader Live, Claude Code vs Codex Showdown

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This video is from the ‘AI with Kyle Live Stream’

First aired: 3 February 2026

Summary: OpenAI dropped their Codex desktop app for Mac yesterday, and the big news is that it's now available for free users—not just the paid crowd. They've also doubled the rate limits for a couple of months, which is pretty generous. I decided to take it for a proper test drive by building an RSS reader live on stream, inspired by Andrej Karpathy's recent tweet about getting back to RSS feeds and away from the endless slop on social media. The whole thing took less than an hour, and honestly, it worked pretty well. You can just install the app and start building without needing to mess around with GitHub straight away, which makes it far more accessible than something like Claude Code.

The verdict? It's solid. Not quite as polished as Claude Code in my view—it's slower, there's no preview panel, and you'll still need to be comfortable with the terminal for some bits. But for free access to AI coding, it's pretty remarkable. If you've been curious about vibe coding but didn't want to shell out £100-200 a month for Claude Code, this is your moment. The app has automations and skills (though skills are a bit broken at the moment), and you can run multiple projects in parallel. I'm going to keep building out my RSS reader in Codex as an experiment, mainly because it's free and I want to see how far it can go.

Watch full edited live stream: https://youtu.be/n60A8BlDzMc

—— Time Stamps ——

00:00 Intro: OpenAI Codex Desktop App Released for macOS 00:40 Free Vibe Coding: Codex vs Google Anti-Gravity 01:12 Rate Limits Doubled for All Paid Plans Until April 02:06 Andrej Karpathy Says Bring Back RSS Feeds 03:12 Codex vs Claude Code: Which AI Coding Tool Wins? 03:28 Codex Features: Parallel Agents & Background Automations 04:50 OpenAI Town Hall: Everyone Asking for Clawd Bot 05:20 ChatGPT Has 900 Million Users 05:29 Codex App Interface Walkthrough 05:44 GitHub Integration for Version Control 06:40 Export to Cursor, Windsurf, Anti-Gravity & Xcode 08:00 Automations & Skills Marketplace 08:55 Model Selection: Codex Medium, High & Extra High 09:25 Planning the RSS Reader Project 11:32 Designing Tinder-Style Swipe Interface 16:39 Building the Proof of Concept 19:19 Terminal Barrier: Why Beginners Struggle with Vibe Coding 20:44 Live Demo: Swiping Interface Works 23:42 UX Refinements & Fixing Tinder Swipe Direction 31:27 Debugging Next.js Errors with Codex 32:47 Pulling Real RSS Data from Ethan Mollick's Substack 34:02 It Works! Full App Demo Reveal 35:28 Built a Working App in Under an Hour 35:57 Codex Pros: Free Access & Good Results 36:25 Codex Cons: No Preview Panel & Slow Speed 38:12 How to Download and Start Using Codex 38:53 Free Newsletter & Community Resources 39:24 Codex Guide Coming to Newsletter 39:36 Vibe Coding Accelerator Announcement 40:15 Outro

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