Codex - A Higher-Level Visual Interface for AI-Driven Software Development

[viniciusczanini]

As AI systems like Codex become more capable, humans will spend less time editing individual lines of code and more time directing, evaluating, and shaping the system at a higher level. At some point, reading raw source code may feel as low-level and unnecessary as reading compiled assembly does today.

Because of this, it would be powerful to have a new kind of interface:
not a text editor, but a living visual graph that represents how the system, the architecture, and the behavior of the code evolve while Codex works.

Instead of showing diffs and line-by-line changes, this interface would show:
• How modules, services, data flows, and responsibilities are changing
• Which parts of the system were touched, created, merged, or removed
• How dependencies and abstractions evolve over time
• What the AI believes it is trying to achieve at each step

Imagine something closer to a dynamic architecture map that updates in real time as Codex reasons, refactors, and implements features — a high-level “thought and structure” view rather than a textual one.

What would make this interface truly valuable is not showing what lines changed, but showing:
• What concepts changed
• What assumptions were introduced or removed
• What parts of the system became simpler, more coupled, or more abstract
• Where complexity is growing or shrinking

The goal is to give us humans situational awareness over an AI-built system:
a way to see what the AI is building and why, without needing to read every file.

I’d love to hear how you imagine such an interface:
What should it visualize?
What signals would matter most?
What would give the most insight at a level above raw code?

[etraut-openai]

This is a really interesting line of thinking! Thanks for starting this conversation. I'd love to hear whether you or other Codex community members have thoughts on the questions you've posed.

[allenanswerzq]

I imaged the same stuff, and building the tool might be just for this purpose. https://github.com/allenanswerzq/llmcc , i felt more and more in the futurue, architectural level of thinking and view will become more and more important.

[paulhshort]

This would be a killer addition. I could see it being difficult to implement well, but if it works as proposed that would def set codex apart.