Mastodawn

⭐️ Had a lot of questions on & offline about how I start a new project using Codex, so here is what I do every time:

• I create a new iOS -> Universal App (Basic) using this Xcode template: https://github.com/steventroughtonsmith/appleuniversal-xctemplates
• I add my AppleUniversalCore package: https://github.com/steventroughtonsmith/appleuniversalcore
• I drop in the latest version of my CodingStyle.md: https://gist.github.com/steventroughtonsmith/ee58b8c7fe6557a073ac792bcb891267

And then the starter prompt, some variation of:

"Please read the CodingStyle document here, and familiarize yourself with the project structure"

Show thread

Steve Troughton-Smith Mar 10

Also as of the time of writing, I'm using the GPT-5.3-Codex model at Medium, for everything, and my model tone set to Pragmatic (instead of Friendly).

I did not have a great experience with GPT-5.4 and I don't recommend it (it's not a model specific to coding anyway) — it would rather discuss things with you, like ChatGPT, than write code, and it really frustrated me. It might work for you.

Show thread

sclyde Mar 10

@stroughtonsmith It's curious that you've had bad luck with 5.4. While not code-specific like Codex models, 5.4 incorporates all of the coding capabilities of 5.3-codex. That said, the non-specific nature of it could be messing up results in certain scenarios.

So far I haven’t had any worse luck with it than 5.3-codex. The fast-mode is a notably welcome change in 5.4. I've also been really impressed with the results when using it within the Codex app.

Show thread

Steve Troughton-Smith Mar 10

@sclyde yeah it really likes to talk, and it will argue back more. I didn't find it produced any better code than before, I did waste a lot more time trying to get it to write what I wanted, and it still had to automatically compact context just as often as before, even with a 1M token window, so I found no benefit to using it. If a GPT-5.4-Codex model comes out, I'll try that

Show thread

Hendrik Mar 10

@stroughtonsmith @sclyde Did you actually opt into the 1M token context? You’d have to enable that with a setting in your config and it raises the token cost by 2x. I haven’t tried it myself, so no idea if it’s worth it.

Show thread

Steve Troughton-Smith Mar 10

@hendrik_kueck @sclyde wasn't aware of that, but not gonna try again with that model

Show thread

Hendrik

@stroughtonsmith @sclyde “GPT‑5.4 in Codex includes experimental support for the 1M context window. Developers can try this by configuring model_context_window and model_auto_compact_token_limit. Requests that exceed the standard 272K context window count against usage limits at 2x the normal rate.”