simonwillison-net-tmayz4.txt (4817B)
1 [1]Simon Willison’s Weblog 2 3 [2]Subscribe 4 5 [3]Just Talk To It - the no-bs Way of Agentic Engineering. Peter Steinberger's 6 long, detailed description of his current process for using Codex CLI and GPT-5 7 Codex. This is information dense and full of actionable tips, plus plenty of 8 strong opinions about the differences between Claude 4.5 an GPT-5: 9 10 While Claude reacts well to 🚨 SCREAMING ALL-CAPS 🚨 commands that threaten 11 it that it will imply ultimate failure and 100 kittens will die if it runs 12 command X, that freaks out GPT-5. (Rightfully so). So drop all of that and 13 just use words like a human. 14 15 Peter is a heavy user of parallel agents: 16 17 I've completely moved to codex cli as daily driver. I run between 3-8 in 18 parallel in a 3x3 terminal grid, most of them [4]in the same folder, some 19 experiments go in separate folders. I experimented with worktrees, PRs but 20 always revert back to this setup as it gets stuff done the fastest. 21 22 He shares my preference for CLI utilities over MCPs: 23 24 I can just refer to a cli by name. I don't need any explanation in my 25 agents file. The agent will try $randomcrap on the first call, the cli will 26 present the help menu, context now has full info how this works and from 27 now on we good. I don't have to pay a price for any tools, unlike MCPs 28 which are a constant cost and garbage in my context. Use GitHub's MCP and 29 see 23k tokens gone. Heck, they did make it better because it was almost 30 50.000 tokens when it first launched. Or use the gh cli which has basically 31 the same feature set, models already know how to use it, and pay zero 32 context tax. 33 34 It's worth reading the [5]section on why he abandoned spec driven development 35 in full. 36 37 Posted [6]14th October 2025 at 9:26 pm 38 39 Recent articles 40 41 • [7]A new SQL-powered permissions system in Datasette 1.0a20 - 4th November 42 2025 43 • [8]New prompt injection papers: Agents Rule of Two and The Attacker Moves 44 Second - 2nd November 2025 45 • [9]Hacking the WiFi-enabled color screen GitHub Universe conference badge - 46 28th October 2025 47 48 [10] ai 1658 [11] generative-ai 1463 [12] llms 1430 [13] 49 ai-assisted-programming 265 [14] model-context-protocol 22 [15] coding-agents 50 88 [16] claude-code 51 [17] codex-cli 10 [18] parallel-agents 6 51 52 Monthly briefing 53 54 Sponsor me for $10/month and get a curated email digest of the month's most 55 important LLM developments. 56 57 Pay me to send you less! 58 59 [19] Sponsor & subscribe 60 61 • [20]Colophon 62 • © 63 • [21]2002 64 • [22]2003 65 • [23]2004 66 • [24]2005 67 • [25]2006 68 • [26]2007 69 • [27]2008 70 • [28]2009 71 • [29]2010 72 • [30]2011 73 • [31]2012 74 • [32]2013 75 • [33]2014 76 • [34]2015 77 • [35]2016 78 • [36]2017 79 • [37]2018 80 • [38]2019 81 • [39]2020 82 • [40]2021 83 • [41]2022 84 • [42]2023 85 • [43]2024 86 • [44]2025 87 88 89 References: 90 91 [1] https://simonwillison.net/ 92 [2] https://simonwillison.net/about/#subscribe 93 [3] https://steipete.me/posts/just-talk-to-it 94 [4] https://x.com/steipete/status/1977771686176174352 95 [5] https://steipete.me/posts/just-talk-to-it#do-you-do-spec-driven-development 96 [6] https://simonwillison.net/2025/Oct/14/ 97 [7] https://simonwillison.net/2025/Nov/4/datasette-10a20/ 98 [8] https://simonwillison.net/2025/Nov/2/new-prompt-injection-papers/ 99 [9] https://simonwillison.net/2025/Oct/28/github-universe-badge/ 100 [10] https://simonwillison.net/tags/ai/ 101 [11] https://simonwillison.net/tags/generative-ai/ 102 [12] https://simonwillison.net/tags/llms/ 103 [13] https://simonwillison.net/tags/ai-assisted-programming/ 104 [14] https://simonwillison.net/tags/model-context-protocol/ 105 [15] https://simonwillison.net/tags/coding-agents/ 106 [16] https://simonwillison.net/tags/claude-code/ 107 [17] https://simonwillison.net/tags/codex-cli/ 108 [18] https://simonwillison.net/tags/parallel-agents/ 109 [19] https://github.com/sponsors/simonw/ 110 [20] https://simonwillison.net/about/#about-site 111 [21] https://simonwillison.net/2002/ 112 [22] https://simonwillison.net/2003/ 113 [23] https://simonwillison.net/2004/ 114 [24] https://simonwillison.net/2005/ 115 [25] https://simonwillison.net/2006/ 116 [26] https://simonwillison.net/2007/ 117 [27] https://simonwillison.net/2008/ 118 [28] https://simonwillison.net/2009/ 119 [29] https://simonwillison.net/2010/ 120 [30] https://simonwillison.net/2011/ 121 [31] https://simonwillison.net/2012/ 122 [32] https://simonwillison.net/2013/ 123 [33] https://simonwillison.net/2014/ 124 [34] https://simonwillison.net/2015/ 125 [35] https://simonwillison.net/2016/ 126 [36] https://simonwillison.net/2017/ 127 [37] https://simonwillison.net/2018/ 128 [38] https://simonwillison.net/2019/ 129 [39] https://simonwillison.net/2020/ 130 [40] https://simonwillison.net/2021/ 131 [41] https://simonwillison.net/2022/ 132 [42] https://simonwillison.net/2023/ 133 [43] https://simonwillison.net/2024/ 134 [44] https://simonwillison.net/2025/