--- title: "A Few Months with Claude — I've Put Codex and ChatGPT Aside" url: https://jacquesao.com/en/posts/claude-heavy-user-notes/ lang: en author: Jacques AO date: 2026-06-18 category: "Tech Trends" tags: ["Claude", "Codex", "ChatGPT", "AI", "Anthropic", "Fable", "生产力"] description: "From tinkering with OpenClaw during Chinese New Year, to the Codex desktop app, to a Claude 200€ monthly plan running at full tilt. Codex is a developer, Claude is a boss; ChatGPT gives ideas, Claude delivers results. And Fable — released and pulled in two days — convinced me OpenAI is in a fragile spot." alternates: zh: https://jacquesao.com/zh/posts/claude-heavy-user-notes/index.md fr: https://jacquesao.com/fr/posts/claude-heavy-user-notes/index.md en: https://jacquesao.com/en/posts/claude-heavy-user-notes/index.md --- # A Few Months with Claude — I've Put Codex and ChatGPT Aside Around Chinese New Year this year, OpenClaw suddenly took off. I gave Agent‑building a shot myself, and spent the better part of a day getting tangled up in all sorts of small issues. After that I switched to OpenAI's **Codex** desktop app, which was a lot more stable — it's an official app, not a bug pit. Already in a different league from OpenClaw. We'd actually tried **Claude** earlier than that, but at the time it only worked through code mode — you had to ask questions inside the Mac Terminal. The barrier and ongoing friction were both high enough that I didn't stick with it. About a month later the Claude web version came out, and that's when it really came back onto my desktop. ## Codex is a developer, Claude is a boss After using both for a while, the difference between Codex and Claude turned out to be huge: - **Codex feels more like a developer.** You have to spell the requirement out clearly. It can take you from 0 to 90% of the work, and that part is genuinely strong — but the last 10% you have to grind through over and over, because it has a hard time catching what you actually meant. - **Claude has a "thinking layer."** It feels more like the boss of a web‑dev shop, or a senior engineer — closer to how a person actually reasons. That positioning drops your communication cost a notch, and the throughput ends up much higher than Codex. As a production tool, once the efficiency gap opens up, the slower one quietly gets shelved. I'm on the **200 € / month Claude plan**, and there are still moments when it feels a little tight. ## My workflow: Claude dispatches, Codex grinds My setup right now is fixed: - **Claude** breaks tasks down, plans, makes judgement calls, and writes anything that needs thought - **Codex** handles repetitive mechanical work — batch edits, batch runs The result: I burn less than 5% of my Codex quota, while Claude runs at close to 100% almost all the time. In other words, I've gone from playing around to heavy dependency. ## Claude and ChatGPT are different animals People tend to lump Claude and ChatGPT together. They're really not the same thing. ChatGPT is a Q&A tool — you ask, it answers. What it gives you is **ideas**. Claude is a production tool — you give it a task, and it **does** the work — it hands you a result. That's a difference in kind, not in degree. ## More than 12 hours a day Since Claude moved into my daily workflow, I use it from the moment I wake up until I go to sleep. Excluding sleep and meals, I'm on it more than 12 hours a day — heavy user, no qualifier. The effect on my routine is real. I used to keep a "normal" workday; now everything I do orbits around Claude. I'd bet more and more people end up like me: using Claude the way we scroll a phone, to the point where not using it feels uncomfortable. The dependency these agents create is only going to get stronger. ## On the valuation Plenty of people say Anthropic is overvalued, that it's part of the AI bubble. From my own usage, it's not a bubble. The reason is simple: - The more you use it, the harder it is to walk away - And this kind of user is willing to keep paying for it ## The two days with Fable One more thing made me even more confident in Anthropic's upside. They released a model called **Fable**. I only got to use it for two days before it was pulled, without even really getting a feel for it. But even in those two days, the level was clear — it was among the strongest models on the market at that moment. Putting a model of that caliber out in the open and then quietly pulling it back tells me, in reverse: the real hand Anthropic is holding is probably much bigger than what's visible from the outside. That's exactly why I say **OpenAI is in a fragile spot**. Not because ChatGPT collapsed overnight, but because Anthropic can drop Fable, walk it back, and do it that calmly — what else is sitting in the other hand? At this pace, I think it's plausible that Anthropic ends up overtaking OpenAI. Because ChatGPT and Codex are already pushed aside in my own setup — a few more days like this and, if I still haven't reopened them, I'll cancel both subscriptions.