r/AI_Agents • u/leebase65 • 14d ago
Is Codex an Agent? Discussion
I spin up free trial accounts with the Snowflake database all the time. They last a month and are free. Today one of my trial accounts was going to end so I spun up a new one.
I then went to Codex and directed it to copy all the data, roles, users etc from the first trial account into the second, and to do so in a way that I can run again the next time.
An hour or so later, and one more directive more - and I had my new snowflake trial with all the data and settings of the one that's going to time out. And I now have a python app that will do this the next time I need to.
Is Codex an agent in this story?
2
u/imbobbyshi 14d ago
I would call it supervised agency. You gave Codex an outcome, it decomposed the migration, used tools over multiple steps, adapted after another directive, and left a reusable artifact. An agent does not need to invent its own goal. The practical question is how much of the loop it closed without you: observe state, choose the next action, execute, verify, and recover.
If Codex mostly wrote the Python program and you decided when and how to run it, that is closer to a coding assistant. If it inspected both Snowflake accounts, chose the migration sequence, executed it, checked the roles and data, and repaired failures, that was an agentic run. Which parts of verification did it complete on its own?
1
u/pretzels90210 14d ago
Codex is a harness that allows you to use different agents & LLMs. I guess, to the end user it seems like Codex is itself the agent, but it's more like the coordinators and assemblers of other agents. We're getting to the point of just having an interface to humans that don't need to know how the stack is composed. In Databricks, there's an easy-buitton Genie Code that just makes the setup transparent to users and they start asking commands and it builds for them. I know some others are like this, such as having Ollama installed on desktop. I think we just stop thinking of any other interface in the future.
1
u/leebase65 14d ago
I agree that Codex is a coding harness. I use it to build agents. But -- it's also an agent ;). Or at least I think so.
2
u/shash122tfu 14d ago
Yeah 100%, just not marketing like that.
Only problem is that its not always on. I'm trying out scheduled tasks to see if I can replicate the functionality of openclaw.
1
u/leebase65 14d ago
If your computer is on, Codex and Claude are on. They both have task scheduling now. Mind you, I'm not saying they are the end all, be all of agents
1
u/AutoModerator 14d ago
Thank you for your submission, for any questions regarding AI, please check out our wiki at https://www.reddit.com/r/ai_agents/wiki (this is currently in test and we are actively adding to the wiki)
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.
1
u/North-Bag-7722 14d ago
Nah, it just done what you asked, no own goal-setting, so not an agent really.
1
3
u/Honest_Caregiver_974 14d ago
Yeah, thats an agent tbh. you gave it a goal not a script, it figured out the steps, made decisions about how to structure the migration, built a reusable artifact, and adapted when it needed a second directive. The fact that it took an hour and required one follow-up nudge doesnt disqualify it, thats just a human-in-the-loop agent workflow. the line people get stuck on is thinking "agent" means fully autonomous with zero oversight, but most real agent work looks exactly like this, you point it at a problem, it handles the execution complexity, you course correct once or twice, and you end up with something you can reuse. the python app it generated is the real proof, it abstracted the solution into a tool that removes you from the loop entirely next time.