How OpenAI's Codex Team Builds with Codex (43 Min) | Alex & Romain

Behind the Craft

Apr 05, 2026•43 min

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Episode description

Alex is the product lead for Codex and Romain runs developer experience. They gave me a rare inside look at how the Codex team operates, including how they build products with Codex and how they ship without traditional specs and roadmaps. Alex also has some spicy takes on the future of PM and what actually matters when hiring.

We talked about:

(00:00) Live demo: Building a game in seconds with Codex Spark

(04:29) "For specs, we write like 10 bullets and that's it"

(08:09) "Our designers now write more code than eng 6 months ago"

(15:30) "We plan short and long term, never medium term"

(22:11) How Alex actually spends his day as Codex PM

(32:06) The traditional career ladder no longer makes sense

(39:20) What the Codex team looks for when hiring (it's not your resume)

Thanks to our sponsors:

Linear: AI agents for modern teams https://linear.app/behind-the-craft

Granola: AI meeting notes that don't suck https://granola.ai/peter

Replit: From 0 to full stack app in 2 min https://replit.com/?utm_source=creator&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=creator_program&utm_content=peteryang