{"slug": "i-read-all-22-gb-of-my-codex-conversations-byte-by-byte-71-was-screenshots", "title": "I read all 22 GB of my Codex conversations byte by byte. 71% was screenshots", "summary": "A developer's byte-level audit of 1,231 Codex conversations totaling 22.83 GB found that 71% of the data consists of images, with only 16% of that being unique; 92% of duplicate images are in conversations used within the past week. The analysis, performed on September 2 and 3, 2026, also revealed that forked conversations depend on other files' bytes, leading the developer to conclude that the honest cleanup approach is compression rather than de-duplication.", "body_md": "# What 22 GB of Agent Conversations Is Made Of\n\nWe fingerprinted every image in 1,231 Codex conversations (22.83 GB). 71% is images, only 16% unique; 92% of duplicates sit in conversations used this week; forks depend on other files’ bytes. Why the honest cleanup is compression, not de-duplication.\n\n## How this was measured\n\nMeasured on one developer’s Mac on September 2 and 3, 2026, with a byte-level pass over every rollout file in the Codex store (1,231 files, 22.83 GB, about ninety seconds), not from Mint’s own summaries. Every embedded image was hashed with SHA-256 and compared inside its conversation and against every other one; each conversation was dated by its last use. Whether a rewritten conversation still opens was checked through Codex’s own reader (the app-server’s thread/read), which is also how the broken forks were found. The Claude Code, Cursor and Claude Desktop figures come from the same kind of pass over their own directories. The scan hooks that produced them ship in Mint and are read-only.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/i-read-all-22-gb-of-my-codex-conversations-byte-by-byte-71-was-screenshots", "canonical_source": "https://mint.dzgapp.com/build-journey/what-22-gb-of-agent-conversations-is-made-of/", "published_at": "2026-09-08 13:41:48+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-09-08 13:56:35.813104+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["ai-tools", "developer-tools"], "entities": ["Codex", "Mint", "Claude Code", "Cursor", "Claude Desktop"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/i-read-all-22-gb-of-my-codex-conversations-byte-by-byte-71-was-screenshots", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/i-read-all-22-gb-of-my-codex-conversations-byte-by-byte-71-was-screenshots.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/i-read-all-22-gb-of-my-codex-conversations-byte-by-byte-71-was-screenshots.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/i-read-all-22-gb-of-my-codex-conversations-byte-by-byte-71-was-screenshots.jsonld"}}