The New Codex App vs. Claude Cowork: The Battle for Your Desktop

🔑 Key Takeaways

• Codex is Reborn: OpenAI has resurrected the “Codex” brand, but not as an API. It is now a desktop “Command Center” for macOS designed to manage autonomous coding agents.
• The Killer Feature: It uses Git Worktrees to let multiple AI agents work on different branches simultaneously without conflicting with your current file state.
• Codex App vs. Claude Cowork:
  • Claude acts like a “Digital Colleague”: It works alongside you, capable of coding and scripting, but also ready to use your mouse and screen (“Computer Use”) to navigate tools that lack APIs.
  • Codex acts like a “Headless Engineering Platform”: It focuses entirely on code and terminal execution, running tasks in the background to ensure reliability and parallelism.
• Skills & MCP: Both use open standards for skills.
• The Fallback Mechanism: When stuck, Claude falls back to clicking the UI. Codex falls back to writing a new Python/Shell script to automate the task.

If you’ve been watching the AI space this week, you’ve likely seen the buzz surrounding OpenAI’s latest release: The Codex App.

At first glance, it’s confusing. Didn’t OpenAI kill Codex years ago? Is this just another VS Code extension? And how does this stack up against Anthropic’s “Claude Cowork” which launched just a few weeks ago?

I’ve spent some time digging into the documentation, the release notes, and the architecture of these new tools. It turns out this isn’t just a rebrand. It represents a fundamental shift in how we are going to build software. We are moving from “AI as a plugin” to “AI as a manager.”

Here is a deep dive into what the Codex App is, how it differs from the old Codex, and how it competes with Claude Cowork.

Part 1: Wait, Didn’t Codex Die in 2023?

Yes and no. The confusion is justified because OpenAI has recycled the brand name, but the product is entirely different.

The Old Codex (2021–2023) was a raw API model (code-davinci-002). It was the engine behind the original GitHub Copilot. It took text in and sent code out. OpenAI deprecated it in March 2023 in favor of GPT-3.5 and GPT-4.

The New Codex is a Product Suite. It refers to an entire ecosystem built for agentic engineering. It is powered by a new model, likely gpt-5.2-codex (fine-tuned for long-horizon tasks), but “Codex” now refers to the tools themselves:

1. The Codex App: A standalone macOS desktop application. (Windows and Linux coming soon. Join the waitlist here)
2. The Codex CLI: A terminal-based tool for headless operations.
3. Codex in IDE: The extension that lives in your editor, like VS Code or Cursor.

The Comparison

Part 2: What is “The Codex App”?

The Codex App is OpenAI’s answer to the limitations of a chat window. If you ask ChatGPT to “refactor this entire repository,” it usually fails because it lacks state, persistent context, and a proper workspace.

The Codex App provides that workspace. It is a Command Center designed for Multi-Agent Multitasking.

Key Features

• Parallel Agents: You can have one agent fixing a bug in auth.py while another agent updates the documentation in README.md.
• Git Worktrees: This is the killer feature. The app uses git worktrees to give each agent its own isolated environment. They don’t fight over the same files. You review their work as Pull Requests or diffs before merging them back to your main branch.
• Background Automations: It’s not just for active coding. You can set up “Automations” to run tasks on a schedule—like triaging Jira issues or summarizing CI/CD logs—locally on your machine.

Part 3: Codex App vs. Codex in IDE

If there is a desktop app, why is there also a VS Code extension?

Think of the Codex App as your Manager and Codex in IDE as your Pair Programmer.

• Codex App (The Manager): Best for “Go build this feature.” You assign a high-level goal, and the agent works in the background for hours. It manages the project, runs tests, and creates a clean diff for you to review.
• Codex in IDE (The Collaborator): Best for “Fix this specific error.” It lives in your sidebar (VS Code, JetBrains, or Cursor) and has immediate context of your cursor position.

The two are synced. You can start a heavy refactor in the App, then jump into VS Code to fine-tune the specific lines of code using the extension.

Part 4: The Big Showdown: Codex App vs. Claude Cowork

This is the most interesting part of the release. In January 2026, Anthropic released Claude Cowork (a “Research Preview”). In February, OpenAI responded with Codex App.

They are fighting for the same territory—your desktop—but their philosophies are radically different.

1. The Philosophy: The Colleague vs. The Platform

• Claude Cowork is positioned as a “Digital Colleague.” It integrates into your existing flow. It is fully capable of writing scripts and building APIs just like a human engineer, but it operates “human-style.” It shares your screen, drives your mouse when necessary, and works collaboratively in your active window.
• The Codex App is positioned as an “Engineering Platform.” It focuses entirely on structure and isolation. It doesn’t want to “share” your mouse or your terminal window; it wants to spin up its own hidden background processes to get the job done without interrupting you.

2. The “Computer Use” Distinction

This is the biggest practical difference for developers.

• Claude Cowork (Foreground/Blocking): When you ask Claude to “Refactor the tests,” it often drives your active terminal or edits files in your current working directory. It feels like a remote pair programmer taking over your keyboard. If Claude is working, you often have to wait or watch.
• Codex App (Background/Parallel): When you ask Codex to do the same task, it spins up a Git Worktree (a parallel version of your code). It runs the refactor and tests in a hidden environment. You can keep coding on main while Codex works on feature-branch on the same machine simultaneously.

Part 5: The Technical Deep Dive: Skills & MCP

There is a lot of confusion regarding “Skills” and the “Model Context Protocol” (MCP). Let’s clear that up, because the distinction defines how these two giants operate.

Correction: MCP ≠ Skills

It is incorrect to say Claude is “powered by MCP” and Codex is “powered by scripts.” Both tools use both concepts, but differently.

• MCP (Model Context Protocol): This is the pipe. It connects the AI to data sources (Postgres, Google Drive, Linear).
• Skills: This is the recipe. These are packages of instructions that teach the AI how to use the pipes to complete a workflow.

How they handle Skills

Why this matters

Codex’s approach allows skills to travel with the code. If I clone your repository, I also clone the “Skills” (instructions) on how to test, deploy, and maintain it. The AI becomes an expert on that specific project immediately.

Claude’s approach allows skills to travel with the user. If I join a new company, my Claude “Colleague” brings its knowledge of how I like to work, regardless of which repo I’m in.

Summary: The War for the Desktop

We are witnessing the bifurcation of AI assistants.

Claude Cowork is the ultimate Collaborator. It is flexible, capable of handling complex engineering tasks and GUI tasks, and feels like working with a partner who sits at your computer.

The Codex App is the ultimate Delegator. It is structured, uses Git Worktrees to prevent file conflicts, and allows you to “fire and forget” coding tasks in the background without losing control of your terminal.

For developers who want an assistant to “drive” the machine alongside them, Claude is the winner. For developers who want to offload tickets to a background process while they keep working, Codex is the new standard.

But for general productivity, Claude’s ability to “just click the button” remains unmatched.

Which one will you be installing?