Every week in the AI Playground section of our Tech Memo newsletter, we feature folks trying an AI tool, or sometimes I test stuff out myself.
This week, we hear from Business Insider's star AI reporter Stephen Council. He's been using OpenAI's Codex tool to build software stuff without using code. OpenAI merged Codex with ChatGPT this week, so this is good timing.
I adore the copy-paste tool. Every day, it saves me from misspelling names, misquoting sources, wasting time on rewriting… I could go on and on. It's quick and easy and basically perfect.
This week, Codex made it better. I've long wanted a version of copy-paste that lets me store multiple strings of text at once, so I can copy something new without losing what I'd copied before. There are clipboard managers for this online, but they often cost money, or add a pop-up and additional clicks — exactly the slowdowns I don't want.
I gave OpenAI's tool a 190-word prompt, and voila! Five minutes and 26 seconds later, Codex handed me my app.
Now, I have 9 different copy-paste slots on my work MacBook. Command-c and command-v work as normal, that's slot one. But now I can keep additional names, quotes, and links at the tip of my tongue: cmd-c-2 copies text for cmd-v-2, cmd-c-3 ties to cmd-v-3, and on and on. The app hangs out on my menu bar, so if I want to see what each slot is storing, it's all a click away.
Very satisfying. It's exactly the niche and nerdy case that vibe coding is good for.
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