My Twitter feed (or X, whatever we’re calling it this week) is full of the same sentiment I’ve been feeling for days. "Claude is smarter, but I can’t handle the pause anymore."
It’s February 13, 2026, and we have officially reached a weird tipping point in AI coding. For the last year, Claude Code has been the undisputed king of logic. If you needed to refactor a messy legacy backend or debug a race condition that only happened on Tuesdays, you went to Claude. You waited 30 seconds for it to "think," and it spat out gold.
But something changed this week with OpenAI's rollout of the new "Faster Codex" model. It’s not smarter than Claude. In fact, it arguably makes more mistakes. But it is fast. Sub-100ms fast. And for 90% of my day, that speed matters more than raw IQ.
The "Claude Pause" is real
I didn't realize how much the latency was killing my vibe until it was gone.
Here’s the typical loop with Claude Code:
- Highlight a function.
- Ask for a refactor.
- ...wait...
- ...watch the 'thinking' spinner...
- Check Slack.
- Forget what I was doing.
- Come back to the code.
That 10-20 second pause doesn't sound like much, but when you're doing it 50 times a day, it shatters your flow state. It turns coding into a turn-based strategy game when it should feel like an action RPG.
Enter the "Caffeine-Fueled Intern"
OpenAI’s new update feels different. It feels reckless in the best way possible.
The "Faster Codex" model doesn't feel like it's "thinking." It feels like it's typing with you. It anticipates what I'm about to write before I fully formulate the thought. It’s aggressive with autocomplete.
A friend of mine put it perfectly on Bluesky yesterday:
"Claude is the Senior Architect who strokes his beard, sighs, and gives you the perfect solution after a coffee break. The new Codex is the 10x Junior dev who chugged four Red Bulls, types 140wpm, and fixes your bug before you finish explaining it."
Sometimes that junior dev breaks things. Sometimes the code isn't idiomatic. But it's there, instantly, on your screen. And it's easier to correct a mostly-right solution that appears instantly than to wait for a perfect one.
The 80/20 Split
I’m not cancelling my Anthropic subscription yet. But my workflow has shifted dramatically in just three days.
I use OpenAI's Faster Codex for:
- Boilerplate.
- Writing tests (it’s shockingly good at guessing edge cases instantly).
- Quick UI changes.
- "Plumbing" work—connecting API A to Database B.
I use Claude Code for:
- System architecture design.
- Debugging nasty, deep-rooted errors.
- Refactoring entire modules.
- Security audits.
Basically, if I need thought, I use Claude. If I need typing, I use Codex. The problem is, 80% of my job is typing.
The "Instant" Factor
There is a psychological shift that happens when latency drops below 100ms. It stops feeling like a tool you invoke and starts feeling like an extension of your brain.
Integration with tools like Cursor and the new Windsurf updates has made this even more obvious. When you hit tab and the code just... appears... you stay in the problem. You don't context switch. You don't pick up your phone.
The community reaction confirms I'm not alone here. We spent two years chasing "AGI-level reasoning" for code. We got pretty close. Now, it seems we're realizing that reasoning is expensive, and sometimes, you just want to go fast.
Conclusion
We reached "peak smarts" a while ago. The diminishing returns on model intelligence are becoming real for daily tasks. OpenAI seems to have realized that the next frontier isn't just making the model smarter—it's making the friction disappear.
If you haven't tried the new model yet, give it a shot. Just be warned: going back to the "thinking pause" afterwards feels excruciating.