Code Quality and Developer Experience Issues

What version of Codex is running?

codex-cli 0.86.0

What subscription do you have?

Plus

Which model were you using?

GPT-5.2-Codex

What platform is your computer?

Linux 6.6.87.2-microsoft-standard-WSL2 x86_64 x86_64

What terminal emulator and version are you using (if applicable)?

Windows Terminal (WSL)

What issue are you seeing?

GPT-5.2-Codex is a great model, but as a developer working on an existing project, my experience has been frustrating.

I use Codex to implement features and improve the codebase, and I’ve noticed that the generated code is often overly verbose in the wrong way, yet not developer-friendly. Even when the code works, it’s hard to read and maintain because the model doesn’t prioritize readability, simplicity, or long-term maintainability.

It often feels like Codex optimizes for what’s safest and fastest for the model (getting the job done quickly and saving tokens) instead of what’s best for me as a developer. The result is code that feels compacted and difficult to follow, with little to no comments explaining what each function is doing. In larger tasks especially, it tends to ignore guidance like AGENTS.md notes and recommendations, even when I explicitly ask for readable, well-commented, maintainable code.

I tested Claude as well, and I was impressed by how readable and easy to understand its output is. I’m not saying Claude is “the best”—I’m sharing this feedback because I want the trainers to improve Codex. Benchmarks don’t tell the full story: developers care a lot about code readability and developer experience, not just whether the solution works.

Please improve the model’s focus on developer-friendly output: clear structure, simple implementation choices, and helpful comments. Right now, the generated code often feels like JavaScript obfuscation—almost like I asked it to make the code as hard to read as possible. This hurts maintainability and makes developers more likely to switch to another tool, even if the model is capable and the code technically works.

What steps can reproduce the bug?

Working on a large codebase and telling it to add a feature, you will see compacted code with little to no comments. and hard to understand and maintain code

What is the expected behavior?

_No response_

Additional information

_No response_