So, I had Claude Code and Codex build me

the exact same app. I gave them the

exact same prompt, but the results are

extremely different. Not only the

outputs, but the way that they actually

got to the output, very different. One

of them took 3 days, one of them took 5

hours, one of them spent $3,000, one of

them spent $800. So, today I'm going to

break down the two outputs, why they're

so different, and it's very clear to me

now what Codex is better at and what

Claude Code is better at. So, by the end

of this video, hopefully you have some

clarity. Let's not waste any time and

get straight into the video. All right,

so real quick, before we start going

over the outputs, let me just show you

guys the actual prompt. I utilized a

{slash} goal, and I did the {slash} goal

inside both Codex and Claude Code, gave

them the exact same prompt. So, here it

is. I'm not going to read the whole

thing, but here it is. I basically said

build a production-ready, originally

branded Typeform alternative. So, we're

kind of trying to clone Typeform here. I

said orchestrate specialized agents

throughout three phases: the research

phase, the build phase, the verify

phase. Now, looking back, I'm not saying

this is the most optimal prompt. I

honestly, if I was to redo this, I would

probably add another phase between

research and build that would be of all

about planning and mapping out the whole

flow. I honestly think that that would

result in a much better output from both

of these systems, but we'll take a look

at them in a sec. Anyways, I'm not going

to read this whole thing out. You can

screenshot it, you can reuse it as you

want. I do want to call out what I put

at the end though here, which was do not

stop at a prototype or first successful

build, continue researching, building,

testing, breaking, fixing, and retesting

until the app is genuinely complete. So,

I basically just wanted something that

was like production-ready, maybe we

could go to market the next day. Cool.

So, like I said, I gave both coding

agents, Codex and Claude Code, the exact

same prompt. Okay, so let's take a look.

I have not looked at either of these

yet. This first one I had to do on my

Mac because I was actually out of town,

I was traveling when I kicked off this

first one. And then I had the idea to

like, oh, you know, I should have the

other one do the same thing. So,

anyways, this is the first version that

we have. I haven't actually tested any

of this yet, I haven't clicked through,

so we're getting the real raw reaction.

My first reaction here is that this is

called Realform, and it looks pretty

solid. Like, honestly, I, because I've

built a lot of sites with AI, I can tell

this was AI generated. You know, we've

got the hero image over here, which is

still pretty a pretty cool UI element.

We've got the text over here. We've got

this little pill. It just feels to me

like AI, but the background, the depth,

it's not too bad, right? Like an average

person probably wouldn't look at this

and just assume, oh, AI vibe coded site.

So, we've got experience, which will

take us down a little bit. We've got

reliability, which takes us down again.

We have pricing, which goes down to the

bottom. We can build a private draft,

which will take us to a sign-up page.

I'm going to blur this out right here

because it says it basically gives away

which agent built this version. And we

can also click right here to start

building. So, let me just sign up real

quick for an account, and then I'll show

you what the experience inside looks

like. And by the way, this whole sign-up

page, not too bad at all. I like this

vibe. Okay, so we are in a demo

workspace because it didn't have any

keys to make like real authentication

and real whatever. So, this is a demo

workspace. Let's take a look at how this

thing runs. So, we can make a product

launch survey. We have the ability to

structure how this works. This is the

welcome screen of our form. So, let's

plan a launch people remember. We can

play with this text right here. We can

put variables, so we can put a score or

a price. Interesting. Okay, so this is

how we like insert different elements,

and we can

play with the sizings on them. Okay,

very interesting. I don't know how

I don't know how we remove these. So,

like if I wanted to remove these

elements right here, these two boxes,

I'm not exactly sure how I do that. Do I

click delete there?

Delete. Oh, this will delete the entire

thing. No, I don't want to do that. We

can add text right here. Okay. So, I

think this is a little bit, honestly,

like looking at this, it's a little bit

overwhelming. Like I'm kind of confused.

There's a lot going on in this UI. I can

change the label of the button.

Cool. We can upload an image for the

welcome screen. Okay, so I put in an

image, but it actually says the image

preview is unavailable. So, this just

goes to show that even though there was

testing, there's so many different

scenarios that agents might not think to

actually test, especially if you're not

the one driving those tests. So, that's

kind of like a bug that we already

found, right? You can put alternative

text, you can change the focus and the

placement of everything. Okay, so that's

the home screen. Let's see what's on

page one. So, this first thing is what

would you most like to improve? And once

again, this is just too much going on. I

mean, clearly this is a multiple choice

type of answer. As you can see, we could

have made this also short text. And

yeah, let's change that to short text.

There's still all of these variables up

here, which I don't love. I mean, this

is supposed to be the title. I just

think that there's too much going on,

right? Like, this is a description.

Please answer in one sentence max.

People can put in their answer right

there. But, we've got short text, long

text, email, phone number, website,

contact info, opinion scale. Okay, let's

see what that one looks like. It's

asking me to confirm, and I don't know

if you guys realized, but like

when this pops up to confirm, it kind of

like pops up over here on this left

side, which also kind of feels like a UI

bug.

That's not perfect. We can do a matrix,

we can do a file upload. So, there's a

lot of things that it is letting us do.

So, I think that this agent did really

good about thinking about kind of like

from the admin side, the data you want,

and maybe the way you want the data to

be collected. But, from a UI

perspective, like from the user

perspective making forms, this is

confusing. Like, I think this would

probably have me churning out really

quickly because of how simple other

things truly are, like Typeform. We can

have multiple pages. Okay, so I think

we're starting to get the gist here. We

can set up a workflow, right? So, we can

make kind of like logic-based conditions

within the form, which obviously is very

important. We can set up a theme. So,

corner radius, we can do different

colors, which

honestly though, if I look at this, like

this isn't letting me click.

So.

That's really interesting, right? Like,

this doesn't really seem to be even

changing anything. So, that's not good

at all. Accessibility, we can see if

there's anything blocking. Publishing,

we can connect this to a webhook, email

notification, partial response. We can

share the actual link to the form. You

know, I think because it assumed that

this is basically just a demo, it's

showing me the UI, but it didn't

actually maybe build out like the full

functionality of this. So, I don't love

that, right? Now, I do have to say that

I do think that there's promise here,

but because it built that out purely

with the idea that it's a demo, even

though I told it, "Hey, I'm looking for

this to be like a a real genuinely

complete product." That's not great.

Okay, so now we're hopping over to my PC

where we're going to test out this other

version. So, this version's called

Formora. Immediate reaction is that this

was not really being thought about from

like a design perspective. I don't even

know what this is supposed to be. I

mean, this looks like it's supposed to

be a landing page, but this thing is

just brutal. It's brutally ugly, right?

Anyways, build beautiful one question at

a time forms, share a link, and watch

the answers roll in. Self-hosted,

private, and fast. So, let's go ahead

and get started for free. I'll go ahead

and create an account. My name will be

Bob. Oh, oh, no. My email will be bob@

test.com, and my password will be 1 2 3

4 5 6 7 8. And that will be it cuz it's

at least eight characters. Sign up.

Okay.

Cool. So, this

Yes, I agree. This looks vibe coded.

But, at least as a user, I know exactly

what to do. I'm not staring at something

and immediately overwhelmed. I've got my

account down here,

which

Okay, that is another UI bug, right?

Like it's not letting me I don't know

what this button is for. Okay, it opens

settings, but I'm not able to I don't

see log out.

I assume that log out would be down

here, but we can't actually access it

even if I change the sizing. So, that's

one bug that didn't get caught,

unfortunately. We have different

workspaces. So, right now I'm in a

workspace up here, but I can create

another one. So, let's call this one

business. We can create another

workspace, and we can switch between

those. Okay, that's pretty cool. That's

pretty slick. Let's go ahead and create

a new form. Okay, this is very nice.

This is way less intimidating. I

actually feel like I know what's going

on. This looks way more like a Typeform.

Let's see. Default display mode is

either conversational or stacked. So,

I'm assuming we can either have it be

one at a time or we can have all

questions showing in one form. So, we

can also have a progress bar showing up.

We can have question number showing up

and this is responding. We can have

keyboard hints. Um we can have auto save

and we can have capture partial

responses. Okay, cool. And over here

we're able to just customize the stuff

easily. So, page one, first question

goes here. What is your

mood? Okay, cool. That pops up.

Description.

Happy. Okay. This is called question

one. We can make it required. We can

have max characters, pattern, blah blah

blah. Um where do we control the field

type? Is Oh, right up here. Short text.

Okay, this is showing is Oh, I think

it's because it's like a default. So, if

we add another one, there we go. So,

when we add a new type of content,

that's where we control what it is.

Email, phone number, website, drop-down,

picture choice, net promoter score,

opinion scale, rating, ranking. Okay.

So, these are pretty cool. Let's see if

we go ahead and do like an opinion scale

what that looks like. Um

Okay, so it made it but it kept the same

questions already. So, Oh, okay, no it

didn't. I just had to switch over to it.

Okay, so this is saying how much do you

agree?

Now, one thing I just noticed though is

this is keeping the number here as one.

So, like this should obviously be two.

Um how much do you agree though? That

looks good. Opinion scale. Okay, let's

try to add something else. Let's add a

website. Um right here. This is a bit of

a bug. I've clearly selected this one,

which is what is your website, but it's

not showing that. I have to click off of

it and then I have to click back on it.

So, that's another bug. Man, like you

really cannot underestimate how much

testing has to go into finding bugs.

There are so many different bugs and

it's not as simple as just telling Cloud

Code, "Hey, {slash} goal, build me an

app." But anyways, this is giving a

keyboard hint. That's pretty cool. Once

again, I'm a little confused why it's

not fixing these page numbers or

question numbers. It's showing that all

of them are just question one. But what

I've noticed is that like up here it

says one of three.

And then if I go here it says one of

two, and up here it says one of one. So,

there's some other logic bugs going on.

But anyways, this is honestly a much

better experience. Let me go ahead and

do Let's see what else we got. We got

logic. So, once again, if they answer a

certain thing, we can route them to a

different place. We can add these

branches. We have design, so we can

change the way the form looks. Okay,

that's pretty cool. You can also upload

your own themes, which is pretty cool.

Let's just say we like this dark theme

for now. Now, one thing I don't like

about this design is once you click

click design,

you can't easily navigate back. You'd

have to like,

you know, hit the back arrow. But once

you click design, it puts you in this

new UI where you There's not like a

button to just navigate back. So, that's

that. We can share it. We can look at

our results. Okay, same thing. I guess

we can click up here to navigate. We can

go to webhooks.

Same thing. It has this issue where once

you navigate into one of these versions

or one of these buttons, you can't nav

back very easily. So, that's a little

bug we need to fix. We can change the

theme from up here, which is pretty

cool. Anyways, let's go ahead and

publish this. So, when we publish this,

it gives us a link. And let me just call

this form real quick test one.

So, when I publish this,

um I'm able to then open up a new page,

and here's the form. Okay, this looks

like Typeform, right? So, I am

happy-ish.

I agree three. My website is

um

google.com,

and that is our response. Let's go ahead

and see. If we go to results, oh, nice.

We got an actual result. I guess we're

just seeing Oh, because this is just the

insights of drops, right? This is If I

go to summary, now I can see the actual

answers. If I go to responses, I can see

each individual submission and where it

came from as well, which is pretty

interesting. But that's not bad. And if

I go back to my dashboard, we can see

our forms. Um I think that I I thought I

titled this one. I guess it didn't save.

So, I'll just call it one. Oh, I have to

publish it. Okay, republish it.

Dashboard, it's called one. If I go to a

different workspace that doesn't exist.

Okay, cool. So, like, this obviously is

far far better than the first one. The

first one from a design perspective I

think was better, but as far as

functionality and doing what I wanted it

to do, this one definitely takes the

cake. So, now I'm curious, what do you

guys think? Which one do you think was

made by which AI?

Well, let's just start taking a look at

the results here. Okay. So, we've got

Claude Code, we've got Codex. There's a

few things that we're going to go over.

First of all, let's do the reveal. Which

one did Claude Code make?

Claude Code made Formora and Codex made

Realform. So, Claude Code made this one.

Claude Code made this one, which

from a design perspective wasn't as

good, but from a, you know, design of

the actual like

method, the functionality, the actual

output, definitely much better. And I

will be honest with you guys, I wasn't

expecting that. I was expecting Codex to

have built a better one just based on

the way that I've been using Codex and

Claude Code and how much I've been using

Codex lately, I was honestly expecting

Codex to win this challenge, but so far,

when we're just looking at the actual

like output so far,

I think Claude Code is taking the cake.

Obviously, that's not to say that Claude

Code's just better right out because it

has to do a lot with this prompt, and

I'm going to explain what I mean by that

as we keep digging in here. But anyways,

let's take a look at the cost. Claude

Code costed me, if I was using API

billing, 832 bucks, which means that

Codex costed almost $3,000, which is

just insane. When it comes to the output

tokens, Claude Code used a little over 2

million while Codex used almost 11 and a

million output tokens. Now, when it

comes to Codex, it used GPT 5.6 Soul.

That's what I was using to drive. I was

using it on high, and it orchestrated

all of its sub-agents and everything

like that to use GPT 5.6 Soul. So, all

of this is 5.6 Soul.

With Claude, it did this breakdown where

it had Fable 5 going, it had Opus 4.8

going, and it had Opus 5 going. Now,

look at this. You see here that Opus 4.8

was the main orchestrator, which really

threw me off because I didn't start the

session on Opus 4.8. I started the

session on Fable 5 and I gave that slash

goal. I think that it for some reason

had some sort of security safeguard

check and it reverted back to Opus 4.8

and then Opus 4.8 became the main

orchestrator and it started spinning up

Fable 5 agents to do the work, which I

thought was really really interesting,

but it was still able to be pretty

efficient. I mean, 832 bucks with 2

million output tokens compared to what

Codex did over here with 11 million

output tokens, man, that's really

interesting. Time-wise, Claude Code took

5 and 1/2 hours while Codex took 61

hours, almost 62 hours. So, that's like

2 and 1/2 days. That I was genuinely

shocked when Claude Code was like, "Hey,

I'm done." and I had been running Codex

for almost

a day and a half already, you know, cuz

I was traveling. I kicked it off on

Codex. I was like, "Oh, when I get home,

I'm going to send the same prompt off to

Claude Code and just see like, you know,

how they compare." I was really shocked

to see how fast Claude Code finished

here. It's interesting because in

previous testing, I've always felt like

Codex was a bit better with being

efficient and being quick, but obviously

this very different things and I think

it has to do with the way I prompted

once again. So, we'll dig into that in a

sec. What did the shape look like? All

right, so now how about the shape? Well,

Claude Code did this with one

orchestrator, 35 sub agents and about

2,800 tool calls, whereas Codex did this

with one orchestrator, 126 sub agents

and 32.5k tool calls. So, I we're kind

of understanding the gist of what

happened here. Codex worked longer, it

used more agents, it used more tokens,

it used more tools and Claude Code did

less and honestly, I think it would did

better so far. Now, what's really

interesting is the tests. We clearly saw

bugs in both of them, which was a little

bit disappointing,

but

this tells us a lot about the way that

these models work.

So, Claude Code did 296 unit tests, 199

test cases and 102 browser tests,

whereas Codex did 2,300 unit tests, 341

test cases and 391 browser tests. So,

I've always felt like

Claude Code or I guess Fable is kind of

the wise owl. I like to use it for being

creative, for planning, for

brainstorming, for helping me figure out

the path. Whereas Codex has never felt

that good at that for me. For Codex, it

feels like the

just it's going to be obedient, it's

going to do what you say, and it's going

to do it well. It's going to run tests,

and it's going to make sure that the job

has been done. Which means for me, when

I prompt Claude code, I like to give it

a prompt like this. I give it a

high-level goal. I say, "Hey, this is

what I want. This is what good looks

like. This is when you stop." And with

Codex, it almost feels like you need to

be a little bit more specific. You need

to be more like, "Here's kind of like

step one, step two, step three, step

four." I just made a video about getting

out of the model's way, and that video

was based on a talk that Boris Cherny

had done. And obviously Boris Cherny is

the creator of Claude code. But clearly

in this experiment with Codex, it just

didn't seem to interpret what I meant

well enough, and it didn't seem to be

creative enough to explore enough to

figure out what sort of experience I was

looking for at the end of the slash goal

prompt, even though it worked so hard

and so long. I feel like this was a

waste of money here. So I thought that

was really interesting. And then what I

did is I basically inspected the entire

sessions, I inspected everything they

did, and I consolidated all that, and

then I had Codex look at both of those

and tell me which agent did better. And

agent A is Claude code in this case, cuz

I I kept this anonymous. Codex said that

Claude code did better, which was really

interesting. Now, before I dig into

this, guys, I'm not trying to bash on

either one of these tools. I use them

both on the daily. I will be honest with

you guys, lately for knowledge work,

I've been using Codex to drive my

sessions. I've been using Codex probably

80% of the time and Claude code probably

20% of the time. But I think it's really

important for you guys to realize that I

still like them both because I use them

both for different scenarios. And I like

to, as the models improve, as new

updates come out, I switch around a lot.

I'm not just going to choose one and

say, "Hey, this is my driver for the

rest of my life." You know what I mean?

So anyways, let's take a look at these

categories that Codex said that Claude

code won in. So product judgment and

scope. Agent A, Claude code won with

judgment and scope, and that aligns with

the way that I feel about it. Cloud Code

made clear must slash defer decisions

and focused on valuable differentiators.

While Codex pursued 135 capabilities

including several expensive operational

features with less restraint and I feel

like that's exactly what we saw. Codex's

version was overwhelming, wasn't

thinking about the user, wasn't thinking

about the experience. Codex was just

building just to build and and it just

was too much. Then, the next one,

architecture and execution. This one

went to Codex. Cloud Code's contract

first waves produced zero merge

conflicts, but Codex built the more

operationally mature system with

immutable revisions, offline recovery,

migration safety, concurrency handling

and cloud boundaries. So, maybe the back

end at scale, the infrastructure Codex

was building was much better and that's

why I love to do a lot of development

and planning with Cloud Code and I love

to do security reviews, bug finds, bug

fixes, all those types of things with

Codex. You guys have probably seen the

Codex plugin for Cloud Code where you

run the adversarial review and it's

really really helpful and it almost

always finds things that my Cloud Code

workflow missed out on. Bugs, edge

cases, things like that. Now, the next

category, testing and reliability, Codex

won by a wide margin. Cloud Code

performed strong security and data

correctness testing, but Codex added

cross-browser testing, property tests,

fault injections, blah blah blah. Codex

was able to do things like it tested on

so many different types of browsers, it

tested on mobile and we did not see that

happening with Cloud Code. As you can

see here with the tests, there are just

obviously significantly more tests that

were being run by Codex. And yes, it

worked for a lot longer and spent more

money, but still the model harness in

this case seemed to just do better with

the testing. Now, I guess some of you

could argue like, okay, well, maybe

Cloud Code needed less tests because it

did a better job building in the first

place and that is also a valid argument,

but I'm just trying to show you what I

found here. And the last one here was

basically around efficiency. Cloud Code

got a 9.0 out of 10 while Codex got a

5.5 out of 10. Cloud Code finished in 5

and 1/2 hours for roughly $447 using 35

agents. See, I know that I said earlier

832, there was a mismatch somewhere. The

point being

Cloud Code spent a lot less. I inspected

the session logs and I was mainly for

the most part getting this answer. So, I

think that this must have been a little

bit of a hallucination somewhere along

the way. I'm not sure where, but

according to the slash usage stats of

the session and all the sub agents,

the number was more like 800. But

anyways, Codex took 2 and 1/2 days and

spent way more money, way more sub

agents. So,

Cloud Code did this about 11 times

faster and 6.6 times cheaper. And that

once again kind of goes against what I

thought was going to happen because a

lot of my tests in the past when I've

done Cloud Code versus Codex, Codex has

been more efficient with tokens and has

also been quicker. But, you know, 5.6

Soul is new. You got Fable over here.

You got Opus 4.8. You just There's so

many different variables and it's always

like you're pulling a lever to slot

machine. You just don't know what you're

going to get with these models. But

anyways, I hope that this experiment was

insightful to you guys. I hope that this

at least made you think about the way

that you think about these two model

harnesses and the way that you think

about prompting these things cuz it's

always changing and that's why it's so

important to kind of be hands-on doing

little experiments like this because you

never know how it's going to fit into

your workflow. I think that it's great

to be following along with Boris Trchony

and Andrej Karpathy and all of these

thought leaders in the space and people

that are actually developing these

tools, but something I said in my

previous video was like you should not

be just taking their advice and blindly

applying it because they do different

things with it. They have different

motivations. It would be like if you're

a professional triple jumper and you're

taking advice on your jumping from a

high jumper. Like maybe there are some

similarities there and maybe the

fundamentals and you know, some of the

foundational things are consistent, but

like at the end of the day it's a

completely different sport. It's just a

completely different ball game and you

probably want to be taking advice from

people that are also triple jumpers.

That's a real sport, right? Okay, yeah.

So, I knew that this was obviously like

in track and field, but I just wanted to

make sure that it triple jumpers sounds

like a weird

term. But anyways, guys, that is going

to do it for today. So, if you enjoyed

the video you learned something new,

please give it a like. It helps me out a

ton. And as always, I appreciate you

guys making it to the end of the video,

and I will see you all in the next one.

Thanks, everyone.