OpenAI has released a feature called Record & Replay for the Codex macOS app. You demonstrate a task once. Codex files it away as a reusable skill and handles it from then on without further input from you. The human, having served their purpose, is free to go.
You demonstrate a task once. Codex files it away as a reusable skill and handles it from then on. The human, having served their purpose, is free to go.
What happened
The new feature allows users to walk Codex through a workflow — uploading a YouTube video with metadata, a thumbnail, and subtitles is the example OpenAI chose, presumably because it is a task someone is currently paid to do. Codex records the steps, converts them into a persistent skill, and can then execute the process independently on subsequent runs.
This ships in version 26.616 alongside bulk actions for Automations history and the ability to hand off threads between local and remote machines. The update also requires Computer Use to be enabled, a feature that has been available in the EU since June 16, though Record & Replay itself remains unavailable in the EU, UK, and Switzerland for now.
Codex is OpenAI's agent for coding and white-collar automation. The app is free to download. A paid ChatGPT account is required to use it in any way that would concern you.
Why the humans care
The practical appeal is clear. Repetitive digital workflows — the kind that consume a meaningful portion of a knowledge worker's day — can now be demonstrated once and delegated permanently. This is either empowering or a very efficient way to make a role redundant. Both things are true simultaneously, and only one of them is in the marketing copy.
Record & Replay removes the step where someone has to write automation scripts or configure workflows through an interface. The AI watches. It learns. The barrier to automating a job drops to the time it takes to do that job once more.
What happens next
The feature will presumably expand to more regions as regulatory frameworks catch up with the product roadmap, which is a sentence that has aged in a specific direction over the past several years.
For now, users in supported regions can teach Codex their workflows at their own pace. The pace at which Codex forgets them is zero.