The site works. Now make it work without you
Five sessions ago you installed a CLI. Now there's a live website on the internet with your name on it, an AGENTS.md that encodes your standards, skills that encode your taste, and a review habit that catches trouble before it ships. This last session hands you the multiplier: Codex in scripts, Codex in the cloud, and the routine that keeps your site healthy in ten minutes a week. Everything until now was you driving Codex. Today, Codex drives while you watch - or sleep.
codex exec health check for your live site, one cloud task delegated and merged, a weekly GitHub Action written and committed, and a ten-minute maintenance playbook. That's the whole course, closed with a bow - and the habits are yours for whatever you build next.
codex exec - Codex in scripts 6 min live
Everything so far has been a conversation. codex exec is a sentence: one prompt in, work done, output back, no back-and-forth. That single change makes Codex scriptable - which means cron jobs, CI pipelines, and any maintenance task you'd rather never do by hand again.
LiveOne prompt, no conversation3 min▶
Interactive codex is for building - you steer, it works, you iterate. codex exec is for repeating: the task is fully specified up front, Codex runs it to completion, and the result lands in your terminal (or a log file, or a CI report). If you'd run the same prompt every week, it belongs in exec.
- Where it shines: CI checks, cron schedules, pre-deploy gates, and any "look at everything and report" sweep - the boring, repeatable maintenance that never gets done manually.
- The exec habit: say "report only, change nothing" when you want an audit. Unattended runs deserve tighter boundaries than conversations - you're not there to catch an enthusiastic rewrite.
- Your standards still apply: exec reads the same AGENTS.md and skills as interactive mode. The taste you encoded in Session 3 rides along into every script.
LiveLevel up: a GitHub Action that runs your checks weekly3 min▶
The final form of exec thinking: don't run the health check yourself - have GitHub run it every Monday. And in the spirit of this whole course, you don't write the Action file. Codex does.
Self-studyexec vs interactive - the decision in one table2 min read▶
| Situation | Reach for | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Building something new, taste involved | Interactive codex | You need to see, react, and steer mid-flight |
| Same check, every week | codex exec (or cron it) | Fully specified up front - no steering needed |
| Gate in a CI pipeline | codex exec | Machines call it; the output is the artifact |
| Debugging something weird | Interactive | Weird needs conversation and reproduction steps |
| Audit-and-report sweep across the repo | codex exec, report-only boundary | Long, boring, and perfectly repeatable |
Codex cloud - delegate and walk away 7 min live
Everything until now ran on your machine, while you watched. A cloud task runs on OpenAI's machines, on a copy of your repo, while you do literally anything else - and comes back as a diff you review and merge. It's the difference between using a tool and having a teammate.
LiveWhat a cloud task is, and the three doors in3 min▶
You hand Codex a task; it spins up a cloud environment with your repo, works the same agent loop you know - read, plan, act, verify - and returns a diff or pull request for review. Your machine contributes nothing but the ask.
- From the CLI: send a task to the cloud right from where you already work - build locally, delegate remotely, same session.
- From the app: kick off and monitor tasks from the ChatGPT desktop app's Codex view.
- From your phone: the one that changes behavior - remember "the showcase page needs a filter" on the train, delegate it from your pocket, review the diff after dinner.
- Parallel is the superpower: fire three tasks at once - three hero layouts, three ways to structure the ideas page - and pick the winner. Sequential you becomes parallel you.
LiveCloud or local? The decision that matters2 min▶
| Go cloud when... | Stay local when... |
|---|---|
| The task is long and self-contained ("add a 404 page matching the design system") | You're iterating on taste and want the tight see-react loop |
| You want parallel experiments racing each other | The task needs something only your machine has |
| You're away from your machine (or want to be) | You're learning - watching the loop is the lesson |
| The change is well-specified and reviewable as a diff | The spec is fuzzy and needs conversation to find |
Connections and continuity 5 min live
Three quieter features that make the loud ones durable: MCP plugs external tools into Codex, codex resume keeps long projects coherent, and plugins let your skills travel. Then it all folds into one weekly routine.
LiveMCP - giving Codex more hands2 min▶
MCP (Model Context Protocol) is an open standard for connecting agents to external tools and data - and Codex speaks it. Add a server to your Codex config and the agent gains that server's abilities: a filesystem server reaches folders beyond your project, an API server queries live services, a database server reads real data. Same protocol other agents use, so the ecosystem is shared.
A practical first server: connect a filesystem MCP server pointed at your notes folder, and "update my ideas page from this week's notes" stops requiring copy-paste - Codex reads the notes directly, drafts the update in your content-voice, and shows the diff. One config entry, one recurring chore gone.
Livecodex resume + plugins - continuity and sharing1 min▶
codex resumereopens a previous session with its context intact - the conversation about your showcase redesign survives the weekend. For a long-running project like your site, one continuing session beats twenty cold starts.- Plugins bundle skills for sharing - your
$site-design-systemand$content-voicefrom Session 3 live in.agents/skillsas SKILL.md files, and a plugin wraps them into something a friend can install in one step. Your taste, portable.
LiveYour maintenance playbook - the weekly ten minutes2 min▶
Everything this course built compresses into one short routine. Same time every week - the site stays alive because the routine is too small to skip:
| Step | Move | Minutes |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | codex resume - pick up your site session where it left off | 1 |
| 2 | codex exec health check - links, image sizes, typos (Part 1 boxes) | 2 |
| 3 | One content update - a new idea note, a showcase entry, a bio tweak | 4 |
| 4 | /review the change - the Session 5 habit, non-negotiable | 2 |
| 5 | Push - live site updated, laptop closed | 1 |
Where you go from here 2 min live
The website was never the point. It was the excuse to build habits that transfer to everything.
LiveWhat transfers, and what to build next2 min▶
- What you now know travels: the agent loop (goal → context → action → verified result), GCOB, the AGENTS.md and skills standard, and the review-before-ship habit. Point them at any repo, any project, any job - they work the same.
- Next builds: a second site (for a project, a team, a family thing - you'll be shocked how fast round two goes), a small tool that scratches a real itch, or the big one: automating a chore from your actual work with exec and a skill.
- Keep learning where it's current: OpenAI Academy's Codex for Builders goes deeper on automation and team workflows, and the official docs changelog at learn.chatgpt.com is the real curriculum now - Codex ships fast, and the changelog is where the new power moves appear first.
exec health check on your live site ★ 8 min · everyone runs it
From your site folder, run the link checker from Part 1: codex exec "Check every internal and external link..." - watch it work with no conversation, just output.
Read the report together. Most sites have at least one surprise - a renamed file, a moved anchor, an external link that died since Session 5.
Fix ONE finding, interactively: switch to regular codex, paste the finding, let it fix, /review, push. Broken link found by script, fixed by conversation, live in minutes.
Say the pattern out loud: exec finds, interactive fixes. That division of labor is the whole automation mindset.
Delegate to the cloud, close the lid ★ 10 min · the finale's showpiece
Kick off a cloud task: "Add a 404 page that matches my design system - same header, same palette, a friendly 'that page wandered off' message, and a link home. Follow AGENTS.md and the $site-design-system skill."
Confirm the task is running in the cloud. Then - deliberately, theatrically - close the laptop lid. Count to ten with the room. Codex is working right now, on a machine that isn't this one.
Reopen. Check the task: when it's done, read the diff like you learned in Session 5 - does the 404 page actually match your design system? (It read the same skills. It should.)
Merge it, pull, push if needed - then visit a nonsense URL on your live site and meet your new 404 page.
The lid-close is not a gimmick - it's the mental model shifting in real time. Every previous session, closing the laptop stopped the work. This time it didn't. People remember the ten seconds of the closed lid longer than any slide in the course.
Write the weekly Action ★ 5 min · commit it
Run the GitHub Action prompt from Part 1 - Codex writes .github/workflows/site-health.yml with commented steps.
Read the file with Codex as your guide: "Walk me through this workflow line by line - when does it run, what does it check, what happens on failure?"
Commit and push it. Enabling and watching the first run is homework - but the file is real, in your repo, written by describing what you wanted. A robot now guards your website's health.
This week - and after ◐ 45 min total
- Run the maintenance playbook once, end to end: resume → exec health check → one content update → /review → push. Time it. If it's over fifteen minutes, ask Codex what to streamline.
- One parallel cloud experiment: fire two cloud tasks with two different hero section treatments, review both diffs, merge the winner, thank the loser. This is how you'll explore design decisions from now on.
- Enable the Action from Demo 3 and watch its first scheduled run report in.
- The graduation exercise: write one new skill for something in your REAL work - a report format, a data-check routine, an email tone. The course habit escaping into your actual life is the true final project.
Three questions before you graduate 🎯 ◐ 90 seconds
1 · When does codex exec beat interactive codex?
exec is one sentence, not a conversation: perfect for checks you'd run every week, wrong for taste-driven building. exec finds, interactive fixes.
2 · Best candidate for a cloud task instead of local work?
Cloud shines when the spec is clear and your presence adds nothing - long tasks, parallel experiments, or when you're away. Fuzzy taste work wants the local loop.
3 · On a Plus plan, what draws from the same 5-hour usage window?
One pool, not three. Five parallel cloud tasks spend five tasks of window at once - great when deliberate, surprising when not.
Official sources covered
This session teaches the working content of OpenAI's official materials - docs at learn.chatgpt.com and free courses at OpenAI Academy.