Shadowing Practice: Ultimate Guide To ChatGPT Codex for Everyday People - Learn English Speaking with Video

This is ChatGPT Codex.

Right now, it's one of the most powerful AI tools available.

And I know it has the word code in it, and it did start as a coding app.

But it could do a whole lot more now.

And just about anyone watching this video is going to be able to use it.

You don't actually need to know anything about coding in order to get a lot out of this app.

So how is Codex different?

Well, instead of just being a chatbot, Codex could actually do the work for you.

It could handle knowledge work and it could also do coding tasks at the same time in the same chat.

And the unique thing about it is it works inside of folders.

on your own computer and it could connect to the apps that you already use like Gmail and Slack, and it could even take over your computer and do certain tasks inside of different apps.

So in this video, I'm going to show you exactly how it works.

I want to show you exactly how to set it up the right way, the app itself.

and I want to show you lots of different use cases

that I have that is going to make it worth your time and I'll include the prompts that I use as well.

So the first thing is you need to download the Codex app.

Right now it's not included in the ChatGPT experience on the web or if you have the ChatGPT app.

Just go to this website link that I'll put below in the description.

It's just on the ChatGPT .com website.

Now, I have a brand new install of Codex here.

Once you install it, it may ask you some question to personalize the experience for you.

And on the left panel here, it's going to feel like ChatGPT a little bit.

You could start a new chat from here.

And there are some other things that we're gonna cover in this video, like sites and plugins and automations.

and projects here and your recent chats will show up here.

But let me show you the center of this for a second because what this does

is actually uses the files on your computer and creates files on your computer.

The best way to organize everything inside a codex is something called Project.

So if you click this right here, you typically want to start from scratch.

So that allows you to create a folder on your own computer.

Now the way I like to work with it is I

like to pretty much isolate everything I do inside of those projects and not really cross contaminate different projects.

It just keeps things a lot more organized as you use this more and more.

So you'll press start from scratch right here and create your first project.

Now for this very first project on our first demo, I'm going to turn a bunch of different receipts I have into a really nice presentable Excel dashboard.

So a lot of us have to do this to make expense reports, for example.

So I'll start here.

The few other things before we go on with this project is you'll see some few other settings that appear.

One it says work locally.

So this is what I typically like to do.

This works on your own computer.

But you can actually connect this to CodexWeb if you want to go beyond just working locally on your own computer.

But that's kind of the power of it.

I like to work this way.

And then you'll see some other important options inside of the chat box right here.

The first one is this one that's really important to understand.

So This is based on permissions that you're willing to give to Codex.

Now, Codex is called an AI agent.

So it will do things for you.

Well, sometimes you want to make sure you kind of hold its hand, right?

You don't want to give it free reign to do whatever it wants because it does have

access to folders on your computer, but that's only if you give it access.

So let me show you how it works.

So the way it goes to work right now is it only has access to

that project or that folder that I created.

It can't go beyond that right now.

But it also, as it goes to work, it's going to ask you for approval always when it's using external files, editing or using the internet,

you could ask it to approve for me.

So this only asks for action.

that are potentially unsafe.

I think this is great for most people.

And then you could give it full access, unrestricted access to the internet and any file on your computer.

If you're watching a beginner's guide to codex, I highly recommend you don't choose this one.

and choose this instead.

On this side you could choose your ChatGPT model that is driving this.

Now I didn't mention this but this codex is available for free.

Everyone has access to it.

But it is usage based.

The more you use it, it's gonna use up credits and then at some point it's gonna be a pop up

that you ran out of credits and you need to pay more.

for a higher plan.

Now the reasoning efforts, the ChatGPT models, if you don't know anything about that, basically the higher the reasoning is,

right now 5 .5 is the best model but you know new models come out all the time.

So that is gonna pick that for you by default.

But the reasoning effort depends on how complex of a task you're doing.

Typically, I just have it set to high, because extra high will use up a lot more credit.

You could also alter the speed.

So right now it's set to fast, 1 .5 to normal speed, but again that's going to use up more credit.

So that is totally based on your plan, how much you're paying and how much you're going to use this.

If you want to keep things on the lower side, standard speed is good with high reasoning effort.

And obviously you always want to use the very best chat GPT model available, which is 5 .5 for just about anything that you do.

Now, when you do create those projects, they typically appear in your documents folder.

and they look like this.

They just look like a folder on your computer.

Now the next thing I did is I put these receipts here inside of this folder so it could access it.

Now remember there was a permission where you could access your whole computer.

Now that's the ultimate superpower of this app if you do give it

that kind of permission because you don't have to then put those receipts into that folder.

They could be scattered

all over the place

and it could capture the different things it needs from those different folders like your download folder or your desktop.

But right now I want to keep it self -contained and organized so I put everything manually into this folder.

Now I'm going to ask you to read all the receipt images, pull out all the vendor names, dates, the total for each, and build me an Excel sheet.

with a simple dashboard that shows me my spending by category here.

Now, if you have it access your whole computer, you have to tell us specifically where to look, if you want it to work faster.

A lot of times, you bring down your usage by being very clear in your prompt.

And by the way, if you press the plus sign here, you can add files and folders directly from here.

And you still use the project folder to create things inside of that folder.

And there's more things like plugins.

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which is access to different apps that we're going to get into in a second.

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Right now, I'm going to go ahead and send out this prompt right here.

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Now, as you could see, Codex is going to go to work, and you could kind of watch it work, go through its thinking process, it creates steps for itself, so it's got to go through these four steps here.

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So sometimes I just let this go and I go on about

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doing something else on the web or just using ChatGPT for a different task.

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In just a couple minutes, it's created what we asked for and it's asking me to open this in Excel.

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I actually created an Excel file, so I'm going to press open in Excel.

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And here is our Excel file.

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So this is the dashboard it created.

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And here's the spreadsheet.

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So it pulled in exactly what I asked for: the vendor, the date, the total, the category.

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It took about two minutes to do this.

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When I used to travel for work, I used to do this all the time manually.

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And it definitely took a whole lot longer than two minutes and I actually never had

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the skills in Excel to make dashboards, I pretty much just was able to do something like this and then send it out.

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And if you go back to that folder here where we had our receipts, you'll see a new document was created called Output.

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And then within that, you could see that Excel sheet that is created here.

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And you could see this dashboard was also saved as a PNG, something I didn't ask for, but obviously really useful to have things like this.

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So that's a very basic example to show you how this Codex app actually works.

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and we're going to also get into plugins how memory works and some more advanced things towards the end of the video.

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And my team and I put together a free guide just for this video, specially focused on getting the most out of Codex.

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It actually includes five copy and paste prompts for everyday business tasks.

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That includes things like creating entire briefs, data cleanup that I'm showing you here, some of my prompts there,

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workflow audits, and you'll find the prompts really practical and easy to use, especially for Codex.

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I'll put a link in the description so you could access that guide completely for you Now, actually, let me get into the memory explanation here on how this works,

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because with codecs, you actually don't have to explain things over and over again.

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So they have some things called skills that we're going to talk about in a bit, but he also has long -term and short -term memory that I want to explain here.

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So there is a file inside of Codex called agents .md.

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So think of this file as your onboarding document.

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If you were hiring a real assistant, right?

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You want to give them as much context as possible.

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So every time you start a new chat or create a new project, Codex could actually read that file first.

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So it already knows things about you, about who you are, and things that you want to get done.

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Now, in this case, I'm going to create an Agents .md file specifically for a project, then you could create a new project from here.

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Remember that I'm a YouTube creator.

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I'm going to have all my spreadsheets color coded by priority.

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If I write code, I want it done.

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in Python here.

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So anything you specifically want or want it to know about you, just say that.

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Or you could actually have the interview format where you say interview me

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and then ask me 10 questions to learn all about this project.

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Or you could have a general agents .md file.

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And if you send this out here, it creates this file typically in that project folder.

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If you chose one, or if you didn't choose one, it will just remember that long term.

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So when it does create it, if I click on it, it basically is system instructions or back -end instructions for how this agent should behave.

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And you could see that right here.

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So, It says I'm a YouTube creator here and it gave it more information than I actually had in my prompt here.

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The coding preferences laid out here, the spreadsheet that I had and the working style.

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And it's pretty short.

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You could have these be much, much longer.

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And by default, it will actually know how to keep its instructions like this one, like AgentsMD.

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Now, this also has an automatic memory where it quietly learns from your past chats over time.

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but you generally don't actually need to touch that or even see where it's at.

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That will do that in the background.

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Now for this next demo, I actually want to show you one of my favorite ways to use these AI type of agents like Codex.

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Claude has another one that does this type of work called Claude Cowork.

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If you have messy folders on your computer, like a download folder, you almost never have the time to figure out what's going on in your downloads folder, right?

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So I'm going to have this take care of that for me with this prompt.

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Look at every file in the download /mess folder.

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This is just the folder I just made, but figure out which client each one belongs to, what it is, name it or rename it clearly,

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sort it by different folders for different clients, and give me a nice folder structure, right?

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So now you're going to give it access to go do things on your computer and move things around in different folders.

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And in this one, I actually already have the folder.

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So I'm going to say choose an existing folder and that's the folder.

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And I'll open that folder here.

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And this is what that folder looks like right now before it's done.

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And I'll show you what happens after it's done.

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This is the file structure that it created for us.

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So let's go over here.

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And this was the messy download folder.

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Let me go back into it.

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And now it's nicely organized and things are renamed with the dates.

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but it kept every single file I had in that folder.

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It just restructured it in the way I wanted it organized.

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And if you look right here, This is the folder structure and it looks exactly that way on my own computer.

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Now for the next use case, I'll show you how it actually works with PDFs, because a lot of times we need to extract information like we did with the receipts, but we need to do it with PDFs.

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I have a lot of PDFs invoices, for example, here, and I ask it to pull the invoice number, the dates and so on.

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OK, so we got ourselves another spreadsheet here, and this time it extracted from PDFs turning invoices into a

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spreadsheet something a lot of us still have to do to this day manually

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again this did it in just a couple of minutes Okay, let's go to the next stage of this, which goes well beyond what I'm showing you so far, because this becomes a super app.

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when you actually start using these things called plugins and then something called skills plugins

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connect your ChatGPT codecs

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into all the different apps you already use you just got

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to give it permission typically one app at a time

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if any of them show up right here as added that's

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because your chat gpt account already had access now codecs get access by default here.

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And you'll see some things like computer use.

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This can control your computer's apps with Codex.

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You'll see Chrome.

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This could control Chrome with Codex and browse the web.

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You'll have to give it individual access to some of these.

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Now, Gmail, obviously, calendar, your entire Google Drive.

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Those are some of my favorite ways to give it access.

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But again, remember you are given it access to go read, write, and sometimes delete files on the things you're given it access to.

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So definitely be careful, be very elaborate with your prompt to give a very specific details

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so you don't burn through credits very quickly.

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But the Gmail app, for example, in order to add an app, I uninstalled this one, but you just have to press add right here.

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This will install the plugin or the connector.

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I'm on a business plan.

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That's why it says approved by your admin here.

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So if you're in a business plan, you may You may need to get permission, but on a plus plan, it should be done by default.

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This is something I've been using AI for for quite a while.

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So all you have to do is type in the "advention" sign, and you could bring individual plugins like this, or individual apps like this.

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In this case, I'm going to bring in that plugin right here, and I just ask it to look through my inbox.

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I give it access to my Google account that is associated with this business here,

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And I'm going to reduce this to high.

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Typically that should be fine for this one.

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And by the way, I forgot to switch projects.

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So if you don't switch projects, it creates it within the other project.

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In this case, it doesn't matter all that much, but you could always go to the chat option.

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and start a chat from here if you don't need it to be inside of a projects.

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And in this case, it gave it to me right inside of chat because I asked it for a table, but I didn't say give me a table in an Excel document.

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So you could actually use this like you would use ChatGPT and not always create things.

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That also reduces your credit usage.

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In this case, I just wanted to quickly glance through that and this is what I ended up getting, which is perfectly fine.

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I don't actually need to create a document from it.

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Now let me show you something called skills.

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One of my favorite ways to actually use any AI tool.

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If you also use Claude, you might have come across skills before.

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But if I go to plugins and let's say I want to create PowerPoint presentations, right?

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One of the things you'll see is the plugins.

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But the other thing you'll see is called skills.

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Let me just click on this one to show you what it does.

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What skills are, are basically recipes.

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You are saving the recipe.

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So ChatGPT or Claude or any other AI tool that uses skills could refer back to it.

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This is enabled by default right here.

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I could always disable a skill and I could always open it to read it.

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- Okay.

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The skill is this set of instructions for how a presentation should be created.

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As you could see, they are usually super elaborate.

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Well, most likely no one sat down and wrote this skill word by word.

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The best way to create it is by actually having a back and forth conversation with ChatGPT

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And then when you get to a point where you really love the output, Say save that as a skill and it will save that as a skill.

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So inside of a new chat

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if I type in slash you'll see I could bring in

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ton of different things inside of a my chat here inside of Codex.

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Skill will be on the bottom and there's a ton of different skills already available in my account.

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A lot of them I've actually created myself, a lot of them come from my chat shipping account, but you could bring any of them into chat.

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Now a lot of them are enabled, so if it needs to use it, most likely it will.

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But if I specifically wanted to bring in a presentation and use that skill, especially if I made one myself, that's how you bring a skill into chat.

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And then your prompt will be to create a presentation

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and then it will follow every set of instruction that skill document has.

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I'm working on a very detailed skills video because inside of Claude is very relevant inside of Codex is very relevant.

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inside of pretty much every AI tool is becoming more and more relevant.

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AI agents use skills that you could custom create.

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So I'll get into that a little bit later, but just wanted to show you, that's how easy it is to create skills and to bring them inside of a chat conversation.

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Now one of the best parts of codecs is, remember, it could do knowledge work.

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It could also do coding.

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It could also generate images, right?

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ChatGPT has right now the very best model when it comes to generating images.

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I could type in a prompt like, "Create three product photos someone wearing a custom knitted sweater in a professional studio." I wanted in PNG format.

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And it created those three images for us and it saved it to our download folder here.

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So that's the three that I could use.

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And then I could then, with a follow up prompt, ask it to maybe put that in a thumbnail for me or create some kind of design or a sale for me.

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here for an add -on running, for example.

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So remember you are inside of a chat bot, so you can actually have a follow -up to keep building on this, which I haven't really shown you.

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I've shown you one -off tasks where you send a prompt, you get an output, but you could just continue this conversation till you get exactly what you want and reiterate,

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which is especially useful with an AI image model that's also an AI agent inside of Codex.

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Next, let me show you one of the best parts of using Codex, which is something called computer use.

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That's when Codex is codecs could actually take over your screen move your mouse around, click on things, and even type for you and use the apps on your computer.

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And you could also do this with the browser.

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So if you didn't turn it on already, you just have to go to plugins, and you have to turn on computer use, and I usually turn on the Chrome use with that too.

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So this controls Chrome, so it could open up browser, on your computer and do things for you.

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Let me go back to this previous chat here, and I'll type out this prompt.

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And you could type in the "add mention" sign and bring in computer use like this.

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You could choose this plug -in here.

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and my prompt is going to be to open Canva, start a new presentation, and put each of the images we just made into their own slide as a follow -up conversation here.

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and I'll send this out.

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So you'll see something like this.

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In the case where Canva is not installed on my computer and needs the browser, it will go use the browser, but it did first check if I have that app installed.

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So if I had Photoshop, for example, it will try to do something in Photoshop, which I haven't had

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a lot of luck with

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but in this case it gave me something elevated risk i lot codecs to use google chrome

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so i will allow it access now at this point i'm hands off it actually opened a new tab

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It went to the Canva website here, and from this point, it'll do everything on its own.

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Now, computer use right now and the browser use right now is pretty slow, so I don't really find it as useful.

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It's an option that just keeps getting better and better.

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It's been around for some times with different parts of ChatGPT, but this is still a little bit gimmicky.

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I'll let this finish up here.

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I'll show you the results in a bit.

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Okay, it finally finished the three slide presentation, it opened Canva, it imported the images, it created this slideshow here, and obviously I could take it from there.

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But for the amount of credits you use here, and for how slow it is, I don't find it very practical.

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but it's really impressive the first time you see it at work.

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And I think this is going to be the future of AI.

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It's just not quite there yet.

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Next, I want to show you automations, which is probably one of the best parts of Codex, where it could do things on a schedule so you could let it go to work while you're sleeping.

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Some of the really popular ones are this daily brief, a weekly review, a project monitor.

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So I'll just show you this one as an example.

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So this sets up an automation that gives a morning brief each day,

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what emails I haven't read yet and anything that needs my attention.

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Now this one, you really want to give it access to a lot of different connectors.

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if you're comfortable with that, because these automations don't really work well, if they don't have context from your actual You want to give it information that is relevant to you.

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Now, automations, I'm working on an entirely separate video.

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So I'll make that as a part two with some other things that I'm saying for a part two.

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This one, I wanted to still keep it relatively short, but definitely check out the automations tab.

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And if you go to view templates, you'll see a whole lot more of them over here.

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And then in my follow up video, I'll show you these in action.

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Next, I want to briefly show you the coding ability.

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This is after all called Codex and it's one of the best coding tools.

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AI tools available right now.

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So there's a couple of different options.

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You could build sites with something to have sites.

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You could create new site and it will build a site with basically that site skill.

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Or you could just type in a prompt here to build you real working apps here.

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And these could run actually on your computer too, and you could publish them with more advanced settings.

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So if I type in a prompt like this to create a modern professional website for a video production company, and give it a little bit more context,

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I could go ahead and send this out and this will go ahead and create that website for me.

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Now while our website is getting built, I want to show you this slash command if you just type in slash on your keyboard.

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These different options that I showed you a few of are really useful.

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One of my favorite ones is this personality option where you could change the personality on how this responds to you.

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You could also build skills and bring in those skills to change the tone and the personality of Codex.

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The other one that's really useful is this option right here called pets.

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So if you bring in the pets, it will just create this little pet in the corner

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that shows you everything that you got going on to notify you when a task is done.

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So while I'm building this website, for example, you can see this is going to work and then the pet will notify me.

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So this is something I would turn on if you are going to create things, especially mini apps or entire websites here.

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Just have the pet so then you could do other things, use codecs with a new chat.

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And then the pet will remind you here with this little check mark when something is ready.

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Okay, after a bit of time, he created a website and he also gave me the link.

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Let me show you this link right here.

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And this is the website that it created for us.

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Now, I didn't give it a lot of context.

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I didn't give it a business name, but just to kind of show you the style of it, this background image.

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It looks very, very professional.

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I obviously wanna give a YouTube links or Vimeo links here to replay some of these videos here.

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but overall a really fantastic looking web page with multiple different links to different sections of it that I asked for.

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By the way, if you go to the settings section right here, you could look at your usage remaining.

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So you usually get a usage for every five hour block and you also have a weekly.

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But you also typically have a reset option, depending on what plan you have, that will reset both your five hour limit and your weekly limit.

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But you only get a couple of these typically.

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But I did use that reset to actually make this website.

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with our business plan and some of the other prompts that I showed you throughout this video, it did require one reset.

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Now for part two, I'm going to get more advanced where we cover more things related to plugins and automations,

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and some more coding example to show you the coding possibility that you have with Codex.

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Again, make sure you grab that free guide that I linked below in the description that I created with my team, on exactly how to get the most out of Codex with prompts included.

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And if you haven't checked out the video I made on Claude Code, I'll put that video over here.

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It's similar to Codex for coding.

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Context & Background

In this informative video, the speaker introduces ChatGPT Codex, a powerful AI tool designed for a variety of tasks beyond coding. The speaker emphasizes that you don't need any programming skills to utilize its features effectively. ChatGPT Codex can assist in managing knowledge work and automating tasks on your computer, enhancing productivity in everyday scenarios. It also offers integration with popular applications like Gmail and Slack, making it a versatile tool for anyone looking to streamline their workflow. This context sets the stage for creating useful communication in English, especially for learners aiming to improve their proficiency through engaging content.

Top 5 Phrases for Daily Communication

“I want to show you how it works.” - A clear introduction to tutorials or explanations.
“You could start a new chat from here.” - Useful for guiding someone through a process.
“Let me show you exactly how to set it up.” - Clarifying how to establish something step-by-step.
“It could handle knowledge work.” - A way of stating a tool's capabilities in managing tasks.
“The best way to organize everything is…” - Essential for providing organization tips.

Step-by-step Shadowing Guide

The shadowing technique is an effective method for improving English speaking skills, and using content like this video can enhance your learning experience. Here’s a step-by-step guide to shadowing this video effectively:

Begin with listening: Watch the video without pausing. Try to grasp the overall message and flow.
Identify key phrases: Focus on the Top 5 Phrases for Daily Communication. Repeat them without looking at the transcript.
Pause and repeat: Play certain segments where the speaker demonstrates new concepts and repeat what they say, mimicking their pronunciation and intonation.
Practice speaking: Utilize the phrases in your daily conversations. Try to relate them to your own experiences to build confidence.
Reflect: After shadowing, summarize the main points of the video in your own words. This will help solidify what you've learned.

Using a shadowing site can facilitate this practice, allowing you to engage with various accent styles and speaking speeds. Additionally, for those preparing for the IELTS speaking practice, videos like this one offer practice material that enhances listening and response skills, benefiting learners who aspire to learn English with YouTube.

Grammar in this video

The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:

Structure	In the video
Conditional sentences if + clause, will/would + verb — a condition and its result	if you didn't choose one, it will just · if I type in slash you'll see · if you go to view templates, you'll see
Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it	is based · is called · could be scattered
Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now	I've actually created · haven't really shown · I've shown
Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing	available, which is · getting, which is · Codex, which is

What is the Shadowing Technique?

Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.

Shadowing technique: read the full step-by-step guide →

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Context & Background

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Step-by-step Shadowing Guide

Grammar in this video

What is the Shadowing Technique?