A practical way to make Claude Code and Codex work longer
A user shared how they use Claude Code and Codex for longer-running work. The main lesson is simple: give the AI a clear goal, clear finish rules, and clear limits before it starts.
The post focuses on Codex CLI and its /goal feature. /goal saves the task goal, so Codex can continue after a terminal restart, laptop sleep, or pause. The author describes one real run that lasted about 6 hours and 44 minutes in wall time, with about 41 minutes of actual model compute. They also reported about 6.8 million tokens of input and a cache hit rate around 94%.
The post compares this with a Claude Code loop that runs the agent again and again, often using files and git history as memory. Codex /goal is more about keeping one long task alive with continuing context. For a solo maker, this matters for clear jobs like adding tests, refactoring a feature, or chasing a tricky bug. The warning is that settings like approval_policy = "never" and sandbox_mode = "danger-full-access" can be risky, because they let the agent act without stopping to ask.
Key points
- Codex CLI /goal lets a coding agent keep working after interruptions.
- The example run lasted about 6 hours and 44 minutes, but used about 41 minutes of actual model compute.
- The author says long runs need clear finish rules, a file reading list, and guardrails.
- Claude Code loops and Codex /goal solve a similar problem in different ways.
- Hands-off agent settings are useful, but risky on sensitive or messy projects.
Quick term guide
- Codex CLI
- A command-line tool for using OpenAI Codex from a terminal.
- terminal
- A text-based way to use a computer by typing commands.
- compute
- The server power and chips needed to run AI systems.
- cache hit rate
- The share of reused AI processing from earlier context instead of doing it again.
- context
- The information an AI uses to understand your request, such as files, notes, and past messages.
- refactoring
- The process of reorganizing and cleaning up the internal code of a program without changing what it actually does on the outside.
- coding agent
- An AI tool that writes or edits code from a person’s instructions.
- guardrails
- Rules and checks that keep AI from doing harmful or unwanted things.