/AI11h ago

Thibault Sottiaux, OpenAI Codex engineering lead, asks developers how they use the /goal feature in Codex agentic coding systems

Kath Korevec asked if resource usage controls would boost adoption.

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Original post
Tibo@thsottiaux#758inAI

Do you use codex /goal occasionally or as your main way to get things done?

4:27 AM · Jun 9, 2026 · 121K Views
Sentiment

Positive users praise Codex's goal feature as powerful and addictive for daily workflows while negative users criticize its fast token burn and low-quality code output.

Pos
51.3%
Neg
48.7%
92 comments with sentiment.
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BOOKMARKS2LIKES18
Diego Carlino@_carlid_dev

The main issue i have with goals is that sometimes it just continues to do stuff for the sake of it.

Biased towards incremental steps that are not really needed and could be compounded, always looking for the next thinnest valuable slice, this increases the cycles quite a lot imo.

11hViews 955Likes 18Bookmarks 2
RETWEETS1
Valéria@Valria34773

@thsottiaux Why the fuck you have never asked non-technical users what they want? Or once they expressed it you always ignored. #keep4o

1hViews 41Likes 3
REPLIES2

@simpsoka Honestly, goal is pretty much the only way I work with Codex both at home and at work. It's just too good. I had Codex looping yesterday to fix some sloppy Opus code and it cleaned up so much, loooooooooool

8hViews 251Likes 7
SIGKITTEN@SIGKITTEN

@thsottiaux needs a "randomly" option

10hViews 651Likes 13
Paweł J Lisowski@PawelJLisowski

i burned myself by wasting whole week usage by reckless usage of /goal.

So since then i started using it more intentionally, first spend some time+thoughts to create more detailed plan, with real goal posts.

basically if my goal is running longer than 2-3 hours, theres something way to vague in it

Had great time using it since this shift in mindset.

11hViews 495Likes 10
Virang Jhaveri@VirangJhaveri

@thsottiaux To plug in real world outcomes into the goal. checkout https://github.com/Nimrobo/superdense

E.g Views, Conversion rate, signups, product analytics.

11hViews 452Likes 2Bookmarks 1
Kol Tregaskes@koltregaskes

@thsottiaux My idea is to have a chat with the agent about what I want. I put it into plan mode to get a plan. Ask it for a meta prompt to do the plan for the /goal and then give the /goal back.

11hViews 288Likes 5Bookmarks 1
Flacognition@f_demaku

@thsottiaux its unusable now because of the terrible rate limits. and I’m on the Pro plan btw.

9hViews 189Likes 8
DrewOnAI@Drew_OnAI

@thsottiaux tactical use only, codex is a glorified autocomplete that lies when you need it most.

10hViews 101Likes 1Bookmarks 1
Kath Korevec@simpsoka

@SIGKITTEN @thsottiaux Is that because you forget about it?

9hViews 273Likes 2
Emanuele Di Pietro@emanueledpt

@thsottiaux if you give me the 10x i'll make it default 👀

10hViews 174Likes 5
Eleanor Berger@intellectronica

@thsottiaux for well-defined tasks, always. just not for interactive chit-chats.

11hViews 136Likes 1Bookmarks 1

@thsottiaux Only some tasks can be specified enough, even then, it's hard to spec every obvious thing.

E.g. /goal Cypress -> Playwright migration was discussed & done, but tests put in wrong places as autistic GPT fixated on `legacy` word and put all tests in a single file named that.

11hViews 200Bookmarks 1
Cha-nom 😻@chanommeowmeow

@thsottiaux reset the usage and i'll let you know 😉

8hViews 105Likes 4
lucas@2lucaso

@thsottiaux with the current usage limits /goal is unusable even on the 20x plan

11hViews 97Likes 4

@thsottiaux I have been using it on some stuff with clear bullet point lists to achieve, but not anymore because it costs too much and I prefer to delegate to lower reasoning models clear detailed plans crafted from GPT 5.5 (x)high

11hViews 959Likes 2
Hadi@muzahidhadi

@thsottiaux /goal is terrible.. Feels like it auto compresses context and continues for Infinity... Here is a better idea when i am about to reach the context limit: "drop all unnecessary noise, retain all important information when you are compacted, are you ready?" then /compact.🤣

11hViews 27Likes 1Bookmarks 1
Juntao W.@juntaowww

Actually I feel /goal is not functioning properly in the sense that for every first goal run, it would stop quite unnaturally before the goal is actually achieved, and I need to let it continue then it starts to have some serious progress. Sometimes I also noticed that it would be trapped into an infinite loop doing repeated things over and over again🤔 is this only happening to me?

11hViews 474Likes 2
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