Jesse McLean

Jesse McLean

@essejmclean.com

Designer who codes. Trying to recover a neglected garden and update an old home. Working at Built by Field (builtbyfield.com).

95 followers148 following154 posts

every single day linkedin notifies me about this retired guy my parents knew 10-12 years ago. every single day linkedin wants to me connect with this guy or see his latest post. we might have like 4 mutual connections.

saw my immediate neighbour at the supermarket i visit almost daily for the first time ever. meanwhile I bump into randos from a decade ago constantly but have never once run into an ex. someone should map the invisible collision patterns of a city - the data exists (which i hate)

is the product openai describe in this article… the codex macos app? they never name it. but the breadcrumbs are right there.

Steve Klabnik@steveklabnik.com

openai.com/index/harnes... i have been mildly obsessed with the ideas in here for the past month or so. incredibly validating, total victory: my suspicions are correct, actually. "This functions like garbage collection" is a sentence I have said out loud. craziness

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thanks for reading my first time investigative journalism, on an incredibly bland subject. if i’m at all right: openai used codex to build the codex app. and it’s out in the world now.

is the product openai describe in this article… the codex macos app? they never name it. but the breadcrumbs are right there.

Steve Klabnik@steveklabnik.com

openai.com/index/harnes... i have been mildly obsessed with the ideas in here for the past month or so. incredibly validating, total victory: my suspicions are correct, actually. "This functions like garbage collection" is a sentence I have said out loud. craziness

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the companion blog post from feb 4 (“unlocking the codex harness: how we built the app server”) describes the desktop app as a client of the app server protocol. published 3 days after the app launched. 7 days before the harness article.

the codex agent core is written in rust and predates this experiment. the rust rewrite dropped june 2025, before the august start date of “harness” so if it’s this, it would just be the electron frontend and all surrounding infrastructure - not the agent brain itself. lots of UI talk in the article

is the product openai describe in this article… the codex macos app? they never name it. but the breadcrumbs are right there.

Steve Klabnik@steveklabnik.com

openai.com/index/harnes... i have been mildly obsessed with the ideas in here for the past month or so. incredibly validating, total victory: my suspicions are correct, actually. "This functions like garbage collection" is a sentence I have said out loud. craziness

View full thread

the article describes wiring chrome devtools into the agent runtime for dom snapshots, screenshots and video. the codex app is an electron app, so chromium.

altman apparently said (venturebeat): “this is the most loved internal product we’ve ever had.” the article: “used by hundreds of users internally, including daily internal power users.” hm..

is the product openai describe in this article… the codex macos app? they never name it. but the breadcrumbs are right there.

Steve Klabnik@steveklabnik.com

openai.com/index/harnes... i have been mildly obsessed with the ideas in here for the past month or so. incredibly validating, total victory: my suspicions are correct, actually. "This functions like garbage collection" is a sentence I have said out loud. craziness

the article says: first commit late august 2025, team of 3 engineers, “internal daily users and external alpha testers.” the codex desktop app launched february 2, 2026. five months later. simon willison confirmed he had preview access days before. i bet lots of others did too.

where does ai take us we’re in a phase where it is addicting. it makes us feel smarter and faster. it’s got all the trappings of a quick hit quick win. it also burns us out. using it a lot is exhausting (i want to explore more about why it is exhausting).

this feeling, this addiction, that it creates is potentially our downfall when we still have control over what’s next for each of us individually. those last sips when it feels extra good before you forget how you got here. i feel better being faster and feeling smarter. but is this temporary?

or is our worry and anxieties over this outsized? is this just an “extra good” or “different medium” moment like “excel was for accountants” (as everyone says) or CAD was for architecture? i don’t know. it’s definitely different.

Jesse McLean reposted

Eau Claire looks so good today with all the frost. A wee bit chilly but it didn't seem to stop anyone from having good times. #Calgary #yyc #Alberta

Jesse McLean reposted

Night of Lights at Field of Crosses tonight November 10th is referred to as Night of Lights where they place a lit candle in front of each cross, and keep them going all night long. It's quite something. fieldofcrosses.com #Calgary #Alberta #Canada #RemembranceDay #LestWeForget More pics 👇🧵

i’ve changed hundreds of wheels (having worked at car2go years ago - rip) but only just did our own vehicle. easy. rewarding. good way to check other things while at it

now i need to investigate the motorcycle. stopped running this year. haven’t felt brave enough to do no big stuff on it while it was running, but now im less afraid to “mess it up” if it’s already messed up

Jesse McLean reposted

Replying to @cmcalgary.bsky.social

the following are in my ever growing platform - bus wraps can’t cover the windows - can’t walk three abreast anymore - two max. it’s only polite - every x number of blocks gets zoning for 1 local hole-in-the-wall brit style pub no matter what. and they must be independent (no brands)

i’m sorry but ios 26 is simply not good. it’s just not glass. it’s bubbles. and so far it seems like a half commitment on apple’s part which just compromises the integrity and vision

i replaced the door on our garage when we moved. it’s very insecure. don’t steal my things.

John Scalzi@scalzi.com

Yuuuup and honestly it's most things with me, I have the bracing personal honesty to admit that most mechanical things are best left to pros, and the few times I deluded myself otherwise ended up with me having to spend extra for a pro to fix my fuck up, on top of whatever the original issue was.

i need a $1m loan to open up my breakfast counter in the brookfield place +15. we serve: 1) the breakfast sandwich i make every saturday (toasted sourdough english muffin, sausage patty, 1 egg cooked in butter, american cheese - optional sirarcha) 2) drip coffee 3) cold brew cult potential

email marketing pro tip: track your April 1st unsubscribe spike. while you're busy crafting that "hilarious" fake product launch, I'm celebrating my personal holiday: "Mass Unsubscribe from Companies with Bad Jokes Day"

given the current state of politics, and the provincial government’s hand in municipal politics here, this is so, so refreshing

Jeromy Farkas@jeromyyyc.bsky.social

🚨 Calgarians deserve transparency. 🚨 Today, I’m taking a stand. My campaign is publishing a regularly updated list of donors so you can see exactly who is supporting our vision for change at City Hall. 🔗 www.jeromy.ca/donate 🧵 (1/8)

the number of systems and processes orchestrated behind the scenes that i’m having to create in order to make a little semi-agnostic data syncing platform spirals and spirals and spirals and spirals and spirals and

so i rarely charge my phone at night because im too sleepy, so in a regular week it’s lucky to have more than 20% charge. this makes some of my friends very uncomfortable

the ephemeral nature of web/tech will allow this industry to remain the wild west. you can just delete my websites, but you can’t delete a bridge in the same way.