// posts/ai-did-not-reduce-my-workload-but-it-increased-my-throughput.md

I’m not doing less - I’m doing more: more experiments, more automation, more “small” ideas that actually make it to production. Lately I’ve been rotating between Codex 5.3 and Opus 4.6. Both are strong, but they optimize for different failure modes and once you treat them that way, picking the right one gets easy. Codex 5.3: depth + correctness Codex doesn’t rush. Give it a complex problem and it goes deep. One time, I asked it to persist AG Grid state (columns, ordering, filtering, sorts the full setup) against a specific version. It fetched archived docs, dug into node_modules, tracing the relevant APIs, validating assumptions, built a plan. One shot. Done. Explore → Reason heavily → Verify → Completeness over speed Codex fixes root causes, not symptoms. Minimum changes, maximum effect. Opus 4.6: Fast builder with strong UI instincts Opus is different. It follows instructions precisely - and that’s genuinely powerful. It’s fast, excellent at UI (seriously impressive), great at tool calls & best-in-class for building things from scratch And Claude Code’s harness makes it even better. 💡 Pro tip: With Opus, be explicit about intent, not just what. Tell it why you want something and watch it fly. My decision rule •🎯 High cost of mistake → Codex first •🎯 Speed to visible output → Opus first Two models. Very different strengths. Yes, Prompting matters. So does knowing which model won't start making things up when it gets tired. #AIEngineering #AINative #opus #codex #AgenticAI