Real Alpha
Watch modeSubscribed

The Pragmatic Engineer · 3 min · Sep 9, 2026

Tibo uses mobile agents to turn questions into reports and prototypes

He dictates tasks to ChatGPT Work, which draws on internal Slack, documents, and data to produce reports. He also uses it to explore ideas and share prototypes in a day.

Tibo Sottiaux

Tibo Sottiaux is an engineer who created Codex and head of Core Products & Platform at OpenAI.

Led OpenAI's launches of Codex, ChatGPT Work and the new Dots personal agent platform.

  • Gergely Orosz, Host · Host, The Pragmatic Engineer

    Spent four years at Uber heading mobile, web and backend teams; shipped part of its payments system.

About this segment

He dictates tasks to ChatGPT Work, which draws on internal Slack, documents, and data to produce reports. He also uses it to explore ideas and share prototypes in a day.

From “Building Codex with Tibo Sottiaux”, Sep 9, 2026. Watch the full episode

Answers “Are AI agents ready for real work?” See all 38 answers

“any question I have, I can get an answer to, like, you know, within 30 minutes.”
Tibo Sottiauxat 1:09:10 · The Pragmatic Engineer1:09:10

Takeaways

  1. He dictates questions between meetings instead of postponing them.
  2. Custom skills shape reports and slide decks for his needs.
  3. He can prototype ideas with teammates in a day.

In this episode

Full episode
  1. 36:37The harness fills model gaps until training catches up4:45
  2. 47:35AI can automate correctness checks in code review4:34
  3. 52:21Good boundaries make AI-driven rearchitecture safer4:29
  4. 21:09Open source builds community but adds operational costs4:43
  5. 25:44Model choice helps Codex compete without locking users in3:28
  6. 32:03Agents could make cloud development environments practical again4:43
  7. 1:02:15ChatGPT Work runs the Codex harness in a managed cloud4:49

  8. 1:07:14Tibo uses mobile agents to turn questions into reports and prototypes3:03

Up next · SourcesAlignment means reliably following the user’s intent4:02

Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

  1. 1:07:20

    Like, what's your working setup in terms of agents, in terms of tasks, in terms of what you manage with it? And related to this, I asked Peter Steinberger what I should ask about you. And he said, like, you need to ask him, how do you deal with the fact that you're involved with all these projects? Your calendar is like Tetris, but usually you show up pretty cheerful. My calendar is fine. um um and it's just i am capable of doing so many more things nowadays because i have the technology like codex and i actually shifted a lot of like my my my work on uh on mobile using tachyvc work where whenever i have something that i want to take note of i just like fire that off I use dictation a lot whenever I have a question instead of like writing it down to look into later or delegating to someone I just like fire it off in charge of your work and I get like a report

  2. 1:08:21

    it has like a whole bunch of like custom skills and custom instructions where it's now like very very tailored to like you know produce the kinds of reports and slide decks and code explorations you know in the style that I can consume effectively and so every time I'm like between meetings or like you know you'll kind of like see me like you know i was just like dictating to my phone as i said before it's just like we do a lot of work in public channels we have like a lot in slack we have a lot in notion and google docs as well and so there's pretty much like there's no question really that i feel i cannot ask that you know codex will be able to sort of like do at least a first pass of thinking through whether it is like public sentiment on a feature, looking at production logs for, you know, how much usage

  3. 1:09:08

    we have on a certain thing, making a list of things that we should deprecate because they're not getting traction, understanding what a certain team is up to. It's like any question I have, I can get an answer to, like, you know, within 30 minutes. And so that's how I use it. I use it for everything. It's like my personal agent in like all the ways. And then oftentimes on weekends as well, I do some like code explorations or like I I built some prototypes and I have fun, like sort of like imagining the future of the product in some ways.

  4. 1:09:36

    And I do that with others on the teams. It's not always the same team. And it's just like in one day, I can build things that I sort of like, I had it in my system, right? It's like, it's like, I woke up one day, I'm just like, we should explore what it means to build this. And then I can just sort of express all of that and get like something in front of people in a day so that they can think through it and criticize it and hopefully get inspired by it.

  5. 1:10:01

    It's like by no means, you know, we need to ship it, but it's more like, okay, I flush it out of my system and then, you know, I go on and like, you know, do other things. So it's just like, so I know it's such a magical time and it's like so empowering.