My colleague wanted a nerdy, niche tool for his MacBook. Codex whipped it up in minutes.

Business Insider AI reporter Stephen Council used OpenAI's Codex tool to build a custom clipboard manager for his MacBook in under six minutes, without writing any code. The tool, created from a 190-word prompt, adds nine copy-paste slots to his workflow, demonstrating the practical utility of AI-powered software development for niche personal tools.

Every week in the AI Playground section of our Tech Memo https://www.businessinsider.com/subscription/newsletter/tech-memo newsletter, we feature folks trying an AI tool, or sometimes I test stuff out myself. This week, we hear from Business Insider's star AI reporter Stephen Council https://www.businessinsider.com/author/stephen-council . He's been using OpenAI's Codex tool to build software stuff without using code. OpenAI merged Codex with ChatGPT https://www.businessinsider.com/openai-codex-chatgpt-app-releases-gpt-5-6-models-2026-7 this week, so this is good timing. I adore the copy-paste tool. Every day, it saves me from misspelling names, misquoting sources, wasting time on rewriting… I could go on and on. It's quick and easy and basically perfect. This week, Codex made it better. I've long wanted a version of copy-paste that lets me store multiple strings of text at once, so I can copy something new without losing what I'd copied before. There are clipboard managers for this online, but they often cost money, or add a pop-up and additional clicks — exactly the slowdowns I don't want. I gave OpenAI's tool a 190-word prompt, and voila Five minutes and 26 seconds later, Codex handed me my app. Now, I have 9 different copy-paste slots on my work MacBook. Command-c and command-v work as normal, that's slot one. But now I can keep additional names, quotes, and links at the tip of my tongue: cmd-c-2 copies text for cmd-v-2, cmd-c-3 ties to cmd-v-3, and on and on. The app hangs out on my menu bar, so if I want to see what each slot is storing, it's all a click away. Very satisfying. It's exactly the niche and nerdy case that vibe coding is good for. Sign up for BI's Tech Memo newsletter here https://www.businessinsider.com/subscription/newsletter/tech-memo . Reach out to me via email at abarr@businessinsider.com mailto:abarr@businessinsider.com .