⚡️GPT5-Codex-Max: Training Agents with Personality, Tools & Trust — Brian Fioca + Bill Chen, OpenAI
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What is Codex Max and why is it named “Max”?
Okay, we're here at AIE Code and we we have uh two of our speakers, Bill and Brian. Welcome. Hienspace. Thank you for having us.
Bill, uh Brian, I I know you've been a listener for a little bit.
Oh yeah. Uh What what's your take on Latenspace? Like how how how does it what what role does it perform in your function at OpenAI? Yeah, I mean, first of all, love the name. Okay. I'm a massive latent space context management person. Tell the story behind the name, maybe the chance. Yeah. So it starts uh we never had Late Space as a name at the start. It was called L Space. Interesting. And uh one of my readers uh donated the domain name Late Space.
Yeah.
Awesome. So Lane just like came accidentally. See us into ether, but like I didn't have the domain. Yeah. So I just I just like called it L space. L space is like the viscoal nice domain. Yeah, no, it's it's it's amazing. I love it because it's you're like always on the cutting edge and it goes into a lot of detail about all the things that like I should be keeping up with as part of my job, and there's so much to keep up with, right? So there's only so many sources of of really good high quality information for what's like happening on a deep level. Well, I said. Your own podcast now. So I'm like, you know, a prepetition. Yeah, well I still listen to yours and I I still think yours is really good. Um so you guys I guess are representing like uh
Startups team, codex, yeah, all the things you just launched Codex. Yeah. Uh the the code is Max. Yep. Codex. Yesterday. Yep. We're good at namings. Yeah. I I I do the people do make friendly. Thibaut was like, yeah, you know, we're good at a lot of things, but not even. Yeah. I was like, well, why call it Max? Like was there any like internal discussion? Yeah, I mean it's complicated because it needs to be differentiated from the previous one. And the idea is like Macs can run for a really long time. We can go twenty four hours or more. I've actually like sort of had it gone for more than that. And the name is is, you know, it's inside codecs on the whim.
Is that
um how do you well you say a really long time, twenty four hours? Oh I on my on my oh that's I think that was on the web inside of Connors, I'm not sure. But I've actually done it on my local computer for for quite a bit longer than twenty-four hours over the course of a couple days, but closing my laptop and reopening it. But but the yet the name, you know, it you could come up with something like pro, but pro is is sort of like slower, more thoughtful. Max is about sort of like speed and maximization, like maximalist. So that for this mono, uh you can it can run for a long time, but it can also Also actually for for the same types of problems it can actually get to the right answer, uh it faster.
So I can it's simply better and faster.
How does OpenAI train coding agents to have personality, communication, and planning skills?
Yeah. Yeah. Um, so I think the part of what you guys are speaking about is the training that goes into uh something like that's right. Baguely people just kinda wave their hands to say RL. But like what specifically have you learned about what's what's a good patty sauce on?
Um, so I got to I mean, this is sounds weird to say, but I I was lucky enough to be really close to the training team while GP5 was training. And one of the big things that we focused on, Bill was there too. Um, we focused on personality, right? So it's really important to build trust with developers for like how a model works. And if a model doesn't act the way that you expect it to do, or if it doesn't work alongside of you as well. You're not going to really trust it. You're not going to get as much out of it. So for coding, we thought, okay, well, what is the best personality for a coder, for a pair programmer, for somebody you trust? And how do we like eval against that? How do we come up with behavioral characteristics?
And we came up with things like communication, right? It needs to keep you in breast of what's going on while it's working. Uh, planning, like come up with a strategy, do Some searching around, like figure out context gather, figure out what to do before you just dive in if if if it makes sense too, and then you know check your work, right?
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is Codex Max and why is it named “Max”?
0:03–2:45
2
How does OpenAI train coding agents to have personality, communication, and planning skills?
2:45–6:24
3
Why does Codex prefer tools like rg over grep and how does tool‑renaming improve performance?
6:24–10:54
4
What’s the difference between the opinionated Codex agents and the more general GPT‑5 models?
10:54–14:46
5
How do sub‑agents and agent‑using‑agents enable parallel, long‑running work across a codebase?
14:46–18:38
6
Why are applied real‑world evals and multi‑turn “job interview” evals the next frontier for AI coding agents?
18:38–22:00
7
How are coding agents expanding beyond code into personal automation, desktop organization, and terminal workflows?
22:00–25:10
8
What is the 2026 vision for trustworthy coding agents that can handle the hardest refactors for any company?
25:10–27:32
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