Compaction is basically seamless which is a major weak point of Claude. At effort=low, Claude is better than codex but still slower. If you don't mind trading the upfront quality of work with additional micromanaging but at a faster speed, it is fine. I also think because of that very reason, you absorb more of the code.
reply5.5 is absolutely comparable to opus 4.7 (both on highest effort), maybe even better. It generally seems less lazy, faster, and writes code closer to what I'd write. The only downside is that for very very long tasks, it can kind of lose track of the goal. For tasks under ten minutes I'll go with codex every time.
replyThe main difference is in the frontend skills. GPT produces terrible design. What I do these days is ask Opus to produce an HTML mockup, then feed it to Codex.
replyI have not had problems with long goals. I let it chomp for 40 minutes on a proof in my custom theorem prover (xhigh fast), and it got there. Very happy with Codex, I ditched Claude for it.
replyThey've added a new goal mode that might help with that
replyI switched some time after Anthropic bricked their models with adaptive thinking. It's a legit mystery to me how people are still using CC professionally.
replyCodex is far less frustrating and manages context better. It's also costing me about 1/3rd as much as Opus 4.7 on CC.
The only way to keep using CC for me has been to stick to 4.6 1M
replyI stopped trying to use Claude to do anything with 4.7 because it sucks up so many tokens so quickly. I use the 4.6 model still and have switched to Codex for larger tasks. It also works better at more complex coding tasks than Claude for web apps that have python backends and typescript front ends.
replyLess gibliterrating and more doing
replyVery fast