13:23Peter Yang · Tutorial
How I Turned Codex Into My AI Life Coach in 13 Minutes
A 13-minute walkthrough of the four plain-text files that give an AI enough context to provide genuinely useful life and career advice.
June 17thThe argument in one line.
Configured with the right custom instructions, connected plugins, and scheduled tasks, ChatGPT Work and Codex become an always-on chief of staff that manages email, calendar, and meeting prep, and can publish finished websites without ever opening the underlying apps.
Read if. Skip if.
READ IF YOU ARE…
- You already use ChatGPT casually and want to move from asking questions to having it take real actions in your inbox and calendar.
- You're a solo operator or creator managing your own email, scheduling, and meeting prep with no assistant.
- You want to publish a simple interactive website — a plan, a game, a guide — without learning to code.
- You're overwhelmed by GPT-5.6's model and effort options and just want a working default.
SKIP IF…
- You're a professional developer already running Codex CLI workflows and want IDE-level or terminal-level detail — this stays at the desktop-app, beginner level.
- You need enterprise IT guidance on the security implications of connecting an AI to a work Gmail and calendar — this video doesn't cover that.
The full version, fast.
The video argues that ChatGPT Work and Codex are the same tool with different skins, and that most of their power comes from setup, not the chat window: personalized custom instructions, every relevant app plugin installed, one long-running thread per workflow, and recurring scheduled tasks. Demonstrated end to end on a 'chief of staff' thread that triages email, drafts replies in the user's own voice, books calendar meetings, researches podcast guests, and runs automatically every Friday morning. The closing section shows Codex's Sites feature turning any chat output — a travel guide, a kid's math game, a product plan — into a shareable website with one instruction, positioned as the single highest-leverage, lowest-effort feature for non-developers.
Free for members
Chat with this breakdown — free.
Sign in and you get 23 free chat messages on us — ask for the hook, quote a framework, find the exact transcript moment, generate a markdown action plan. Bring your own key when you want unlimited.
Create a free account →Where the time goes.
00:00 – 01:04
01 · Cold open: burning questions
States the video's promise and lists the seven questions it will answer, from Chat-vs-Work-vs-Codex through building free websites.
01:04 – 02:22
02 · Chat vs. Work vs. Codex
Explains the three ChatGPT desktop-app surfaces are the same model with different UIs; the host says he prefers Codex by default.
02:22 – 03:18
03 · Which GPT-5.6 model and effort to use
Shows an intelligence-vs-token chart to justify defaulting to GPT-5.6 Sol at medium effort, reserving high effort for planning.
03:18 – 06:23
04 · Personalizing custom instructions
Walks through his own Settings > Personalization > Custom Instructions text: bio, formatting pet peeves, a candor directive, and an anti-AI-slop rule.
06:23 – 09:30
05 · Connect your apps and organize your threads
Demonstrates installing 23+ app plugins (Gmail, Calendar, Docs, Slack, Notion, Figma) and organizing projects into one long-running thread per workflow.
09:30 – 13:47
06 · Let ChatGPT manage email and draft replies
Runs a chief-of-staff thread that lists open email action items, auto-unsubscribes from newsletters, and drafts a hotel follow-up email trained on his own writing voice.
13:47 – 17:19
07 · Schedule events and prep for meetings
Books a Google Meet from a plain-language request, finds a calendar conflict automatically, and runs a podcast-prep skill that drafts a full interview guide.
17:19 – 19:23
08 · Automate recurring work with scheduled tasks
Converts the manual email/calendar workflow into a scheduled task that fires every Friday at 7am and lists his other running scheduled tasks.
19:23 – 21:01
09 · Continue your work tasks from your phone
Shows the Codex mobile 'remote' view and the Amphetamine keep-awake app required to keep the source Mac reachable, with a caveat about compulsive checking.
21:01 – 25:37
10 · Publish travel guides, games, and product plans as Sites
Demos three published Codex Sites: a Japan travel catalog, a multiplication-table game built with his daughter, and an interactive PRD-style product plan.
25:37 – 28:52
11 · Recap: seven action items
Closes with a seven-point checklist recap of the whole video and points to behindthecraft.com for further courses.
Lines worth screenshotting.
- ChatGPT, ChatGPT Work, and Codex run the same underlying model — the only real differences are which apps are connected and whether a pull-request review view is shown.
- GPT-5.6 Sol at medium effort is presented as the default for almost all tasks; high effort is reserved for heavier planning work.
- A four-part custom-instructions template — who you are, a formatting pet peeve, 'be candid and push back,' and 'avoid AI slop language' — is claimed to measurably change how the model writes.
- Installing plugins for Gmail, Calendar, Docs, Slides, Sheets, and Drive before anything else is described as the single step that makes the assistant capable of action instead of just conversation.
- One long-running thread per recurring workflow outperforms one thread per task, because Codex compacts old messages while preserving the thread's working context.
- A single standing prompt — list open email action items and unsubscribe candidates from the past few days — replaces a recurring manual inbox-triage habit.
- Because the assistant can drive a browser, it can click 'unsubscribe' inside individual marketing emails itself rather than just drafting a list for the user to act on.
- Asking the model to review your own sent messages and build a matching 'voice and tone' skill is shown fixing overly formal auto-drafted replies in one pass.
- Meeting booking works from loose natural-language input — a restaurant name, or a screenshotted chat where two people agreed on a time — not a structured calendar form.
- The repeatable pattern for automation is: run a workflow manually once, refine the prompt with feedback, then convert it into a scheduled task that fires without being asked.
- Remote (mobile) access to Codex threads depends entirely on the source computer staying powered on, which is why a keep-awake utility becomes a required accessory, not an extra.
- Both GPT-5.6 and Claude models reportedly lowball time estimates for website builds — quoting weeks for work Codex's Sites feature completes in five to ten minutes.
- Turning any chat output into a published, shareable website with one instruction ('take this into a site') is framed as the easiest way for a non-developer to get something interactive online.
Seven setup habits turn ChatGPT into a working chief of staff
AI WORKFLOW
Almost none of the value comes from the chat window itself — it comes from custom instructions, installed plugins, one thread per workflow, and scheduled tasks that run without being asked.
02Chat vs. Work vs. Codex
- Chat, Work, and Codex are the same underlying model with different interfaces — Work adds app connections, Codex adds a pull-request review view for code.
- If forced to pick one, default to Codex: it covers everything Work does plus code-specific tooling, with no real downside for non-coding tasks.
03Which GPT-5.6 model and effort to use
- For most tasks, GPT-5.6 Sol at medium effort is the balance point — enough intelligence without burning through tokens.
- Reserve high effort for planning-heavy work; the jump from medium to high rarely pays for itself on routine tasks.
04Personalizing custom instructions
- Writing custom instructions once — tone, formatting rules, and a standing 'push back, don't just agree' directive — changes every future response instead of requiring re-prompting each time.
- Explicitly instructing the model to avoid hedging, filler phrases, and code-blocks-for-prose measurably cuts AI-sounding output.
05Connect your apps and organize your threads
- Installing app plugins for email, calendar, docs, and drive before doing anything else is what turns a chatbot into an assistant that can act, not just answer.
- One long-running thread per recurring workflow beats one thread per task — the model compacts old messages while keeping the thread's context intact.
06Let ChatGPT manage email and draft replies
- A single standing prompt — list open action items and unsubscribe candidates from recent email — replaces a recurring manual inbox-triage habit.
- Having the assistant draft in review-before-send mode, not auto-send, keeps a human check on anything that leaves the inbox.
- The model's default reply tone runs too formal; explicitly asking it to study sent messages and match your voice fixes that in one pass.
07Schedule events and prep for meetings
- Calendar booking works from a loose description — a restaurant name, a screenshotted conversation — rather than manual form-filling.
- The same assistant that books a meeting can research the guest and draft an interview-ready prep doc, collapsing two chores into one prompt.
08Automate recurring work with scheduled tasks
- Manually running a workflow once, refining the prompt, then converting it into a scheduled task is the repeatable pattern for turning ad hoc AI use into passive automation.
- Power users measure their setup by how many scheduled tasks run in the background, not by how often they open the chat window.
09Continue your work tasks from your phone
- Remote access to threads only works while the source computer stays powered on, so a keep-awake utility is a prerequisite, not an accessory.
- Constant phone access to running agent threads can become as compulsive as social media scrolling — worth setting a boundary around.
10Publish travel guides, games, and product plans as Sites
- Turning any chat output into a shareable website with one instruction is positioned as the single most valuable feature for people with no coding background.
- For internal planning docs, an interactive site with tabs and a component library gets actually read, unlike a Google Doc PRD nobody opens.
Terms worth knowing.
- Codex
- The agentic mode inside the ChatGPT desktop app that can browse, edit files, take actions in connected apps, and review changes like a pull request — not just answer chat messages.
- ChatGPT Work
- A mode of ChatGPT that connects to everyday apps such as Gmail, Calendar, and Google Docs so it can act inside them rather than only answering questions.
- Custom Instructions
- A settings panel where standing rules for tone, formatting, and behavior are written once and then automatically applied to every future conversation.
- Plugins
- App connectors — Gmail, Calendar, Notion, Slack, Figma, and similar tools — that let ChatGPT read data from and take actions inside third-party apps.
- Effort level
- A GPT-5.6 setting, from low to ultra, that trades response depth and token cost for speed and expense; medium is the recommended default.
- Scheduled task
- A recurring automated prompt that runs on a set cadence, such as every Friday morning, without the user starting it manually each time.
- Sites
- A Codex feature that publishes any chat output as a shareable or publicly viewable website with a single instruction.
- Remote
- The mobile-accessible version of Codex threads, which routes through and depends on the source computer staying powered on.
Things they pointed at.
Lines you could clip.
00:15
“The ChatGPT desktop app has been growing like a weed. It literally is growing by a million users every single day.”
17:49
“Monitoring all your codec threads and trying to get your agents to work all the time is very addictive, and I'm not sure how healthy it actually is.”
24:49
“Both GPT 5.6 and Cloud models keep saying that it's gonna take, like, two or three weeks to build this stuff, when in reality, it only takes five or ten minutes to do it.”
Word for word.
Read-along
Don't just watch it. Burn it in.
See every word as it's spoken — crank it to 2× and still catch all of it. The same dual-channel trick behind Amazon's Kindle + Audible.
metaphor
00:00Hey, everyone. I now use ChatGPT work and codecs for almost everything that I do on my computer, and I'm gonna show you exactly how to do the same in this video.
00:12Ever since OpenAI launched GPT 5.6, the ChatGPT desktop app has been . It literally is growing by a million users every single day.
00:24But let's answer some burning questions first. Right? Number one, when should you use chat, work, or codex?
00:31Which GPT 5.6 model is right for you? How do you connect codex to all the favorite apps that you actually use? And how do you keep projects and threads organized as you have more chat conversations?
00:44How do you build an AI chief of staff in codex to manage your emails and calendar? And how do you use Codex on your phone? And finally, how do you build beautiful websites for free and get Codex to work for you while you sleep?
00:57I'm gonna cover all of these topics step by step in this tutorial. It's gonna be super beginner friendly, so let's get right into it. First, what exactly is the difference between chat, work, and codex?
01:09Well, basically, it boils down to this. Chat is a regular ChatGPT that we're all familiar with. Work is ChatGPT except it can now work inside your favorite apps, and Codex adds features designed for coding and developers.
01:24Honestly, I'm not a huge fan of this ChatGPT work and Codex distinction. As far as I can tell, the main difference is the UI and how responses are presented. So let's take a look.
01:36So here we have the ChatGPT desktop app. You can see up here that we can switch between work and codex. Right?
01:43And pretty much the only difference, if you look at this, is when I switch to codex, there is now a pull request page here. And pull requests, by the way, are basically what developers use to review and approve each other's code.
01:55And if I switch back to ChatGPT work, that part is missing. But as far as I can tell, that's pretty much the main difference between ChatGPT work and Codex. In my opinion, these two things should exist as one thing because Codex itself is not too difficult to understand and use.
02:11It's basically just a bunch of chat threads except now you can actually do stuff. Personally, I prefer to stick to codex, but chat gbt work works perfectly fine too.
02:22Okay. Now let's talk about something that's even more confusing. So GBT 5.6 comes with three different models, SOL, Terra, and Luna, and each option has five different effort levels from low to ultra.
02:35So what model should you use? Well, here's a chart that shows intelligence versus output tokens for GPT 5.6. We're looking for higher intelligence but fewer output tokens.
02:46I can see here that the sweet spot is GPT 5.6, so medium effort. It delivers good enough intelligence without burning all your tokens.
02:57And sometimes I use so with high effort for planning here, but overall, I really haven't noticed much of a difference between the two, and I almost never use Terra or Luna. So in my opinion, you should just stick with GPT 5.6 sole with medium effort to get good enough intelligence while still conserving your tokens.
03:17Now let's jump back into the ChatGPT desktop app. If you're using ChatGPT on the web, the desktop app is the biggest AI native upgrade that you can do. You can just do so much more on the desktop app than on the web.
03:30And the way to install it, just search for ChatGPT app install on Google and you'll find it. So the first thing I'd to do on a fresh install is to go to settings, personalization, and change the custom instructions.
03:43So let's go to settings. Let's go to personalization. You can see here that we have the custom instructions here.
03:50Let me expand it over here a little bit more. The reason I like to do this is because I have to customize how the model responds to me, and there's things that I want the model to understand.
03:59So let's kinda walk through this. The first bullet is telling the model about me. Right?
04:04I have over a decade of product experience and I'm also a creator. I want to learn technical concepts.
04:11That's something that I'm working on. So while I'm building with Codex and ChatGPT work, I like to have the model actually teach me system design, technical trade offs, how APIs work, so on and so forth.
04:25And I like to try to avoid jargon explain everything in easy to understand way. So that's number one. Number two is I have a pet peeve where I don't like the model to use code blocks for anything except for actual code.
04:38It tends to wanna use code blocks for just like regular pros, which I really don't like. So that's there. And number three and a four, I think is pretty important.
04:46So number three is be candid and thoughtful. Tell me what I need to hear while staying curious and caring. And one thing that I've noticed, you know, with the best models like GPT 5.6 is that it tends to just wanna agree with you.
04:59It's kind of like rewarded, but it's always agreeing with what you think. And what I want the model to do is actually to stick to principles and push back when it needs to. Right?
05:09Okay. So number four is write plenty in the active voice, minimize hedging, patting, and grand claims, and avoid all these AI slop terms.
05:18I really don't like this is about x, this is about y, and a lot of em dashes, a lot of just like throw clearing stuff, especially since I use Chateapia a lot to edit my writing. So having this kind of stuff here is very important.
05:31And by the way, if you check out my GitHub, which I've linked in the description, there is a free no AI slop tool that goes into way more than these things. It actually removes over 20 pieces of AI slot phrases to help you edit any piece of writing.
05:45So check that out in the video description. And then there's some stuff down here, and I don't think you actually need this stuff. The reason I have this stuff here is because I used to use Clocko a lot, and I still do sometimes.
05:56And I wanna make sure that I have one canonical set of skills between ClockCode and ChatGPT work and Codecs. So there's something called Symlink to make sure that both apps refer to the same folder.
06:08But if you just use Codecs, you don't actually need five and six. The point here is that you want to ask some of these custom instructions to personalize how the model responds to you.
06:18The next thing I'd like to do, again, on a fresh install of the ChatGPT app is go to plugins. Now plugins are extremely important to let ChatGPT actually work inside your favorite apps.
06:32And I think the bare minimum set that you should install is Gmail, Google Calendar, documents, presentations, spreadsheets, and Google Drive, right, so that Chatability can actually manage your emails, calendar, and edit your docs, presentations, and sheets. Let's take a look at all the plugins that I have installed.
06:49So here they are. I have over 23 plugins installed. And then other than what I mentioned, there's the PDF.
06:56You know, I really dislike using Adobe Acrobat and any Adobe product, to be honest. So being able to let ChatGPT read and also edit my PDFs is just incredibly useful. And scrolling down here, there's other stuff around Slack for community messages, Notion for my Wiki, Figma for design, and granola for my meeting notes.
07:18Right? So as far as I can tell, there isn't any real drawback to installing a ton of plugins.
07:25So definitely install plugins for all the apps that you work with on a daily basis. This is the key setup step that makes Codecs incredibly powerful, so I cannot reinforce this point enough. Okay.
07:38Now that we cover plugins, let's cover projects and threads. So I have two pink threads here, and if I expand this, here are all my projects.
07:47Right? And as you can see, I have projects for my personal operating system and various products and apps that I'm working on down here. Now within each project, I like to organize threads based on individual tasks and workflows.
08:03So for example, in my personal OS project, I have threads for making podcast episodes for various guests, for helping to edit my newsletter post, drafting and posting social posts across all social networks, and so on and so forth.
08:18Right? And one thing that Codex does really well is it's really good at compacting previous messages in the thread while still remembering what they were about. So, basically, that allows me to essentially just have extremely long running threads.
08:33You can see there's a very long thread with a lot of back and forth conversation and and just keep going. I'm not worried about codecs getting confused or not knowing what's going on.
08:43Another benefit of of having one thread per workflow is that they're just so much more easier to manage than having to manage a whole bunch of threads for individual tasks. Right? Now to organize your threads better, you can also drag and drop individual threads inside the project, and, of course, you can ping threads to the top that you're working on.
09:04One more thing is if you hold down the pound sign on your Mac, you can quickly navigate between different threads. So I can go to pound three, pound four, pound two, and so on to navigate. So that's basically threads.
09:17The TRDR here is that I recommend all of you use long running threads, one thread per workflow. And now that everything's organized, let me show you how to actually get some real work done.
09:30Okay. So all of us have to manage emails and calendar meetings.
09:35Right? And these days, I don't actually go to Gmail and Google Calendar much. Instead, I try to manage everything through Codex.
09:42So let me show you exactly how that works. So first of all, you need to make sure that you have the plugins installed for Gmail and Google Calendar for this to work. And then what I recommend you do is just start a chief of staff thread.
09:54And the way to start a thread is go to new task and just say, let's make this the chief of staff thread. Okay. So now that we have this thread in place, one thing that I frequently miss with my emails is I read the email and I don't follow-up right away and I just forget to follow-up.
10:09Right? So what I did is I started by asking Codex, check my email from the past three days and list the top five open action items to follow-up on and emails to unsubscribe from, and also link the actual emails.
10:22Do not share any confidential information because we're game this tutorial. So here's the list that quotas came up with. It looks like there is a new device logging.
10:32There is a Google payment issue. There is an automation that I built that broke. There is some thread about granola and meeting with Brex.
10:39Right? And here is a bunch of unsubscribed candidates. And if I click one of these things, it'll take me to the actual email.
10:49So what's the next step here? Now that we have this list, what we can do is basically just tell Codex, hey.
10:55Why don't you unsubscribe from all five emails? And because Codex can use the browser, it can actually open each of these individual emails in Chrome and click the unsubscribe button and just get it done.
11:08So it looks like it worked for two minutes and it unsubscribed to all five emails that I wanted to unsubscribe from, which is pretty incredible. Right? Because previously, I had to go into the emails and click unsubscribe one by one and there's always new marketing emails coming in.
11:24I also use codecs all the time to find and follow-up on previous emails. So for example, I sent an email to book a hotel in Japan and they haven't replied to me yet. So I basically asked Codex to find the email for the Yufuin Hotel in Japan to send a follow-up message, but let me review it first.
11:44So I found the email thread, and it said that I sent the last follow-up message a week ago, and it went off and actually drafted a reply. So I'm following up on my reservation.
11:54We wanna stay during Christmas time, prefer this room, and so on and so forth. And because and because we have our Gmail extension hooked up to Codex, I can just tell her to send the email after I edit and review it. So I just said send, and it got sent successfully to the existing thread.
12:11Now to take this to the next level, what you can do is you can train Codecs to reply to emails using your voice and tone. If you look at this email, it's a little bit too formal.
12:21So why don't we actually get Codecs to learn by voice and tone for emails? So basically, told you to review my sent messages and let's create a slash email skill to draft emails in my voice and style.
12:35And then it worked for four minutes. Let's take a look at what Ashley did. It went through a bunch of emails and reviewed everything.
12:41It actually even recognized that my voice is different whether I know the person versus someone new. Right?
12:47And then there's something here. And it basically created a scale here. Let's take a look.
12:51So create a skill called email, and here's the workflow, and here is the voice that it should follow. Now let's actually test the skill with the Japan email draft that we had.
13:04And thirty seconds later, you can see here that it drafted an email that's a little bit shorter and less formal, which is more casual like my style. So this is important, guys. You notice how I asked Codas to do some research on my writing style for emails.
13:20It put together a skill for me. Right? And then I actually tested the skill to make sure that it's matching my voice before I just kind of said, okay.
13:28Let's keep using this from now on. But you always wanna test the skills that Codex makes to just make sure that it actually is what you want.
13:35Right? Because usually, it doesn't really get perfect in one shot. You gotta iterate and go back and forth with it and make it better.
13:41And I have another video about building self improving skills that I'll link in the video description. Now that we talked about email, let's quickly talk about using codecs to manage your calendar as well. You know, I've always found it a pain to open Google Calendar and manually schedule an event by clicking a bunch of buttons and entering a bunch of text.
14:02It's much easier to just ask Codex to book calendar meetings for you. So for example, I asked it to book a Google Meet meeting between me and Char for Friday at 9AM PST called Peter Char for fifteen minutes.
14:17And Codex basically went off and it found Char's email. Right? And it even found that I had a conflicting meeting where I had to drop off my kid at her camp during the same time and eventually booked the calendar event here and even added a Google Meet link.
14:33If you're booking a meeting to, for example, meet someone for coffee or lunch, you can just mention the name of the restaurant and Codex will find it for you. Or if you're having, like, just kind of like a WhatsApp conversation with someone and you agree to a meeting time and place, usually what I do is I just screenshot a conversation and copy it directly into Codex and it's able to book the meeting for me.
14:55So these are just like super convenient, especially if you do it from your phone. Another thing that I did recently a few weeks ago was I just asked Codex to add all upcoming World Cup matches starting from the quarter finals onwards and book it on my calendar as optional events.
15:12And I did a bunch of research and basically added all the matches for me. For me to do this manually, it would have taken me at least five, ten minutes to do. Right?
15:19But PODIS basically did it in one or two minutes. Now let me show you guys something more advanced they can do on your calendar. So what I asked Codex now is find a list all upcoming podcast meetings in the next seven days because I do a lot of podcast interviews.
15:35So it basically found that I had three podcast interviews. There's one today with Jason from Codex, Hamo, and then Paul.
15:43Now I have a podcast prep skill that I use to prepare for each episode by doing research online, drafting a few questions to ask the guest, and then putting together an interview guide. So basically, I just ran podcast prep for Paul, which I'm interviewing on Thursday.
16:01And it's asking me a bunch of questions about what do you most want viewers to learn from Paul, and I have some reference material and Paul's articles on x that I pasted here. And then it went off and did four minutes of work.
16:13So I did a bunch of research, it searched a bunch of stuff, and it came up with a research backed outline, right, that you see here. And with these interviews, I found it best to figure out the packaging, like, basically, the YouTube title and thumbnail first so you can figure out what the right angle is before you actually do the interview.
16:31And here, we have a bunch of different options. And number one is Codex runs my app business because Paul has built a lot of iOS and Mac apps using Codex. So that's the main topic.
16:43Right? And based on that, it went off and wrote a complete guest facing draft guide right here. So you can see here that there's a welcome, there's questions that I should ask, there's sample answers, and so on and so forth.
16:56Normally, would go back and forth with this a couple times to make sure that it's actually good and apply my taste and style to it. But in this case, I just asked it to go ahead and add it to this Google document. So let's open a Google document now.
17:08And you can see here that now I have a full interview guide for Paul that I can actually share with him, which is incredibly useful. So where am I going with all this? Basically, pretty much every single week, I have one or two or three podcast interviews that I had to prepare for.
17:26And this is how you get Codex to do work for you proactively. Right? So down here, have a prompt saying, schedule a task to run every Friday at 7AM.
17:35At this time, we're gonna merge all the email and calendar workflows that I just showed. So number one, check my past thirty days of email and list the top five open action items and the emails to unsubscribe from.
17:47And number two, check the next seven days of calendar events. And if you find a podcast episode, it should say it's podcast between Peter and x, then run the skill and create and link the docs for each episode.
18:00And also check for other important meetings that I should prep for. So basically, created this scheduled task and let's open it here. You can see here there's a bunch of description and so off and so forth that Codas came up with.
18:13And if we go here to the schedule page, you can see that there is an active Friday chief of staff brief that we just scheduled. And I have some other things here to clean up my local downloads folder and get some funnel data and so on and so forth.
18:28So let's go back to our chief of staff thread. And I just wanna emphasize, people who are really good at using Codex, they have a ton of scheduled tasks going.
18:36Right now, we have scheduled a weekly task. Right? I've talked to folks on the Codex team.
18:40They have pretty much daily scheduled tasks going that look at their Slack, their emails, granola transcripts, and more, and try to help them prioritize and figure out what they should be doing. So this saves them a lot of time from having to check five different apps to get the enough context to figure out what they should do next.
18:58So definitely make use of scheduled tasks is incredibly valuable. So basically, the lesson here is after you do the manual work of Codex, right, we did the manual work to check your emails, find action items, check your calendar events, we gave it some feedback. After you do this manual work, usually what you wanna do is ask Codex to schedule a weekly task, a daily task or even a monthly task so that it can do this work more proactively in the future.
19:25Okay. Now let's talk about using Codecs from your phone because we often have to manage our emails and calendar there and we also are often on the go. So to get access to Codecs from your phone, just open a ChatGepty app like I have here and click this thing and then go to remote.
19:44So remote is basically all of your Codecs threads, and it basically talks to Codecs through your computer. So there's a really big catch here, which is your computer has to be on for all of these remote threads to actually work.
19:57So how do you keep a computer on if you're not around? Well, the way I do it is I basically have this app installed on my Mac called Anfentemy, and it's basically a keep awake utility.
20:09Right? So if I open Anfentemy here, I'm able to set how many hours and how many minutes I want the app to stay awake.
20:18So usually what I do is before I leave the house, I set the app to keep my laptop awake for a few hours so that even if I'm sitting around watching my kid at summer camp or doing something else, I can actually continue to build and talk to Codex on my phone. Now I have to admit that looking at all your codecs threads on your phone while you're out isn't really much better than browsing social media.
20:44So I have to remind myself and you guys should do this too to basically go out and and just stay focused on hanging out with your family and friends because monitoring all your codec threads and trying to get your agents to work all the time is very addictive, and I'm not sure how healthy it actually is. Okay.
21:01So we covered topics one to six, but I want to save the best for last, which is how do you build beautiful websites for free with Codex and ChattyPT? So going back to the app here, you can see that now Codex has a sites feature. Right?
21:16And what this does, it it lets you publish any kind of website either to yourself and a few friends or publicly to everybody.
21:25So in a previous video, I made a travel catalog for my upcoming trip to Japan, and I converted into a site by just telling you to, hey, take this into a site.
21:36So let's take a look at the site now. Let's open this here, and it's gonna open in Codec's native app browser.
21:43And here is my Japan travel catalog. Again, it's got the Torii Gate at the top, and it's all all the places that I wanna go to down here. You can see how sharing this is just so much more engaging and interactive than sharing a list of bullet points?
21:58I can basically share this with my wife and kids to get them excited about the upcoming trip. Another site that I made that I wanna show you guys is a Safari math game to learn the multiplication tables. Right?
22:13But so I'm trying to teach my kid the multiplication tables, and we basically vibe coded this game together. She's super into animals.
22:21So, basically, the way the thing works is you answer the right question, and it will show us some confetti, and it will ask you more questions, and so on and so forth. And I can tell you guys that, like, she's much more interested in playing this game than just, like, learning multiplication from a standard math homework sheets.
22:37I think we built this app maybe a week ago, and by now she's memorized most of our multiplication tables. And I think it's thanks in huge part to this app.
22:46So definitely build fun sites and apps with your kids using ChatGPT. It's actually incredibly simple. Just tell Codex and ChatGPT, hey.
22:54I wanna build a fun animal website to learn the modification tables, make it visually interesting, and go ahead and do it.
23:01And that's pretty much all you need with the GPT 5.6 to build something like this. Alright.
23:07Let's look at one more site before we finish, which is this tastemaker plan. So let's open it here.
23:14I've spent more than a decade working as a product leader. And during that time, I've written a lot of PRDs and specs in Google Docs. Right?
23:24And I've learned to keep them short because engineers don't like to read a lot of words. But the reality is that people don't read them still. So what's much more interesting, I think, is an interactive site they can click through to understand what the product requirements are.
23:38So this is a new kind of PRD that I'm working on. This is a tastemaker website that lets you basically add movies, TV shows, video games, board games, and more to curate your taste and share of other people.
23:51So this PRD has three different tabs. It's got the product requirements, the user problem, the goal, the solution, and the individual user stories, and it also has the design.
24:03So design in this case is the design principles, the style guide, and very importantly, actual component library, the actual components that you should use.
24:13And what I found is that coming up with the style guide and component library first, before you actually make a ton of box, it's extremely useful to keep all your designs consistent. And finally, the PRD also has the tech stack.
24:28So what kind of tech we're gonna use and why? The data schema that we're gonna use, very important because it's very hard to change the data after you go public, and different trade offs that we've made.
24:39And perhaps most hilariously is both GPT 5.6 and Cloud models keep saying that it's gonna take, like, two or three weeks to build this stuff, when in reality, it only takes five or ten minutes to do it. So I I don't really know why it keeps trying to output.
24:53Hey. It's gonna take a long time. It's trying to .
24:57I think at some point, I'm gonna open source this new PRD format, talking to your friends at OpenAI and Anthropic. A lot of them have basically switched over to using HTML for team review of plans instead of using markdown files or using Google Docs.
25:14And both companies are also building features like artifacts and sites to make reviewing and sharing and commenting on these HTML artifacts a lot more intuitive and engaging.
25:25So I'm really excited for that. So that was a bit of a digression. The point is make a lot of sites, share them with your friends and family or make them public.
25:33It's probably the easiest way in my opinion to just get a web page online and I should definitely try it out. Alright, guys.
25:40So we just cover a lot. I want you to remember seven action items from this video. Number one, if you haven't already, download the ChatGPT desktop app.
25:50If you're still using ChatGPT on the web, the desktop app is the biggest upgrade that you can do because now ChatGPT and Codex can actually do stuff and help it get worked up. Number two, if you're confused by all the different model options, which is extremely confusing, just stick with GPT 5.6 SO with medium effort.
26:10As we saw from that chart, it gives you strong enough results without burning through all your tokens at once. Switch to high effort if you need to do heavier planning or maybe like a longer build.
26:21But generally, medium effort on SOL works perfectly fine. Number three, personalize your custom instructions.
26:28Right? Tell ChatGPT how you want it to respond. Mine says to be concise, to avoid AI slop, to challenge me when needed, and explain technical concepts in plain language so that I can learn while I'm building.
26:42Number four, install plugins for the apps that you use every day. This is extremely important.
26:48Start with Gmail, Google Calendar, documents, presentations, spreadsheets, and Google Drive, and add tools like Slack and Granola if you use them. The more plugins you install, the more capable Codex and ChatGPT becomes.
27:01Okay. Number five, there's different ways to organize your threads, but I think one of the first threads that you should start is a chief of staff threads that can help you manage your emails and your calendar. And we covered how you can use it to basically find action items and emails to unsubscribe from and also plan for upcoming meetings, and even draft stuff in Google Docs to help you prep for a meeting.
27:27And most importantly, we talked about how to get Codex to do work proactively for you by just scheduling a bunch of tasks. For example, to run every week or even to run every day.
27:39Number six, we talk about using codecs from your phone. If I'm honest, I think about half of my codecs usage actually comes from my phone and I rely on this app that I shared called Amphetamine and again, I'll point in the description to keep my laptop on so that codecs can continue working. And finally, we talked about building and publishing sites such as a travel guide, a learning game with your kid, or even a product plan.
28:04Stuff that's interactive and visually engaging that people actually want to read and consume. And you don't have to be a developer to learn all this stuff. You just have to ask ChattyPeter or Codex to just build a website for you and describe it.
28:16And as usual, I'm gonna include all the prompts that I used in this video in the first comment below. So I hope you enjoyed this completely free tutorial. If you wanna go deeper, I have all my best AI skills and courses on behindthecraft.com, so check it out.
28:32I'm also building a complete codex course with a lot more detail and my complete personal OS setup that I'll share later this summer. As always, I hope you appreciate no bullshit tutorials like this, and please like and subscribe if you enjoyed this video, and I'll see you next time.
The Hook
The bait, then the rug-pull.
The host opens by claiming ChatGPT Work and Codex now run almost his entire computer-based workday, then spends the next 28 minutes proving it — screen-recording the exact setup, prompts, and scheduled tasks rather than just describing them.
Named ideas worth stealing.
25:47list
7-Step ChatGPT Work Setup
- Download the ChatGPT desktop app
- Use GPT-5.6 Sol (medium) by default
- Personalize your Custom Instructions
- Install plugins for the apps you use every day
- Set up a chief of staff thread
- Use Codex from your phone
- Build and publish Sites
The video's closing recap checklist, presented as the minimum setup for getting full value from ChatGPT Work and Codex.
Steal foronboarding checklist for any AI-tool tutorial or internal team rollout doc
How they asked for the click.
VERBAL ASK
28:32product
“If you wanna go deeper, I have all my best AI skills and courses on behindthecraft.com.”
Soft, single-mention CTA delivered in the closing seconds after the free recap, backed by a plain title-card slide — low-pressure compared to the density of free tactical content preceding it.
MENTIONED ON CAMERA
FROM THE DESCRIPTION
PRIMARY CTAWhere the creator wants you to go next.
OTHER LINKSAlso linked in the description.
Visual structure at a glance.
