Codex by OpenAI has been one of the best IDE I've used for working with agents right now. It ships free with a ChatGPT subscription, and the interface pattern it uses is becoming the new standard across coding tools.
Below: the layout, project setup, skills, the Notion integration, and the four projects to run.
The interface pattern is becoming standard
Codex looks like ChatGPT until you notice the structure. Chat threads on the left, agent in the middle, work product on the right.
Claude Code's new desktop app uses this layout. Cursor uses it. Codex uses it.
The terminal interface ruled coding agents through 2025. Claude Code in the terminal was useful for developers and inaccessible to anyone in business who wanted agentic workflows without learning a shell. The graphical interface won. Same agents underneath, much wider surface.
Projects and parallel agents
Codex organizes work into folders. Each folder is a project. Each chat inside it lives under that project.
Create a new project from an existing folder. Every chat you start under that project shows up in the sidebar. Hit Command-N to spin up parallel agents.
A spinning indicator means an agent is working. A blue dot means it finished and you haven't read the result.
The shape of the tool is built for running things in parallel. Kick off a research task, start a coding task, start a third one, come back when the dots turn blue.
Skills compress repeat workflows
Skills are reusable agents you build once and call by name from any chat.
A useful one to start with is a "YouTube Researcher" skill. One command pulls transcripts from a creator's last 10 videos and writes a tailored report.
Pick a task you do often. Build it as a skill. Call it by name. Codex starts to feel less like a chatbot and more like an operating system once you have a handful of them running.
Codex as Claude Code plus Cowork in one product
Codex collapses two separate Anthropic products into one.
Anthropic split Cowork (knowledge work) and Claude Code (coding) into separate apps with different permissions. You cannot ask Cowork to build an app. You switch products.
Codex keeps knowledge work, coding, automations, and documents under the same interface, the same permissions, and the same project context. You can also run Claude Code inside Codex.
Notion connection with scoped permissions
Codex connects to Notion in one click. The thing to pay attention to is the permission scope. You can grant access to the entire workspace, one teamspace, or a single database.
Scope it to one database. Upload videos to a single Notion page, comment on parts of the script, attach files. The agent does its job and never sees anything else in the workspace.
If privacy matters, scope it down to the database level. Codex respects the boundary.
Browser agents and GPT 5.5
Browser agents were too slow to be worth the trouble for most of this year. GPT 5.5 closed the gap. Within three months, browser agents will control a browser as well as a human can.
The implication is workflow-readiness. Get the documentation, the project structure, and the skills set up now, so when the speed lands your stack is already shaped to use it.