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Katie Parrott is a staff writer. She writes Working Overtime and contributes to Vibe Checks, Source Code, and Context Window.
New apps, tools, and setup—here’s what we changed and why
Aug 27, 2026 · 4 min read
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We talk about AI progress like it’s a race between models. That’s the part with version numbers, and what you argue about over dinner. But the model is only one piece. It reaches your work through the app you open it in, the files and tools you let it touch, the instructions you’ve saved from last time, and the person keeping all of that from going stale. Any of those can change your results as much as a new model would—sometimes more.
We rewrote two of our guides this week. The models didn’t change. The infrastructure around them that governs their behavior and capabilities did. These guides are written as much for agents as for humans, so share them with your agent and ask it: “What can we learn from this that we can adapt for how we work?”
When we initially wrote our Codex for Knowledge Work guide, the idea of using a coding-agent interface for something other than coding was so new that even OpenAI hadn’t built a dedicated home for it. Now it has. Quick questions stay in Chat, longer assignments move to Work, and software jobs go to Codex. For knowledge workers who don’t touch code, the vast majority of your tasks can be handled by Work.
Research is the easy part. The work is everything after: the report drafted, the spreadsheet updated, the recap posted in Slack, the follow-up actually sent. Grok Bot’s Bots do that part. Each one runs on its own cloud computer, signed in to your CRM, your ATS, your inbox, clicking and typing through the same software your team already uses. Give a Bot a job instead of a prompt, then check the result the way you’d check a coworker’s. Built by the team behind SpaceXAI.
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