Brad’s North Carolina Cook Out mint Oreo shake review, and Ben’s Pacific Northwest work-trip update before the brothers dig into the big idea of the week: what it actually means to become “AI native” at work. Using Jason’s Codex maxxing article as the spark, Brad frames the shift from one-off ChatGPT-style prompts to long-running agent threads with memory, tools, voice input, steering, queued follow-ups, automations, and heartbeats. Ben translates that into a practical workplace lens with the “core four” framing—model, prompt, context, and tools—and compares onboarding an AI agent to training an intern in accounting or engineering.

From there, the episode gets very hands-on. Brad explains how he thinks about memory files, Slack MCPs, voice workflows with Wispr Flow, recurring heartbeat tasks that check GitHub PRs, and Codex artifact-style outputs like PDFs, websites, and dashboards. Ben stress-tests the hype with very real questions about token budgets, enterprise ROI, Slack drafts that overcommit on your behalf, and the funny moral gray area of using powerful AI to do tiny jobs you could have done yourself in three clicks. The back half turns into a mobile-agent tour: Ben shares his Termius, VPS, SSH, and Tailscale experiment for running Codex or Claude Code from a phone, while Brad walks through Codex Remote in the ChatGPT app and why phone-to-computer agents feel like the future. They close with Brad’s must-watch mobile-app founder bookmark and a note that Episode 42 wraps season one before a short hiatus and refreshed look.

Chapters:
00:00 Intro and Travel Catch-Up
02:06 AI-Native Codex Workflows
04:50 Core Four Agent Framework
07:26 Better Loops and Memory
11:07 Slack Drafts and Memory
14:23 Voice Input and Steering
19:24 Heartbeats for Recurring Work
23:52 Artifacts and Personalized Tools
26:56 Token Budgets and ROI
36:34 Bookmarks and Mobile Codex
44:04 Season One Hiatus

Links:
- Codex maxxing / AI-native workflow article
- CEO’s journey of building a mobile app
- Codex Remote in the ChatGPT app

#BreakevenBrothers #OpenAI #Codex #CodexRemote #AINative #AIAgents #AICoding #ClaudeCode #MCPServers #AIProductivity

Creators & Guests

• Bennett Bernard - Host
• Bradley Bernard - Host

Episode 41 starts with a very Breakeven Brothers moment: the guys forget what episode they’re on, recap Brad’s family visit, and relive a 150-plus-game Soulcalibur gauntlet before diving into the real headline—why Brad now lives inside the Codex app. He explains what changed with GPT-5.5, why the model feels dramatically better at unblocking itself, and how that has shifted his workflow from small, careful requests to bigger, longer-running tasks. If you’ve been wondering whether Codex is just another AI coding surface or something materially different, this conversation gives a grounded answer from someone using it all day.

From there, the episode gets practical fast. Brad walks through plugins, computer use, Git worktrees, the built-in review pane, automations, long chat compaction, and why plan mode has mostly disappeared from his workflow, while Ben stress-tests the ideas from an accounting and knowledge-work angle with Canva brochures, CRM data, email tooling, and plenty of honest beginner questions. They also compare Codex to Claude Code and Claude Co-Work, share Brad’s current default of GPT-5.5 on extra high reasoning, and close with two strong bookmarks: Greg Eisenberg and Riley Brown’s Codex masterclass, plus Evan Bacon’s serve-sim tool for showing an iOS simulator inside Codex’s right-hand pane.

Chapters:
00:00 Weekend Recap and Soulcalibur
01:24 GPT-5.5 Powers Up Codex
05:16 Terminal Habits vs App Workflow
08:46 Plugins, MCPs, and Computer Use
11:22 Worktrees and Review Pane
15:05 Life After Plan Mode
20:37 Best Settings for Codex
25:48 Accounting Workflows and Plugins
30:14 Bookmarks and Closing Thoughts

Links:
- Codex app
- Canva MCP
- Startup Ideas Podcast — “How to Use Codex: The Codex Masterclass”
- Augmented Accounting
- serve-sim

#BreakevenBrothers #Codex #GPT55 #AICoding #OpenAI #ClaudeCode #MCP #DeveloperTools #AIProductivity #AccountingTech

Creators & Guests

• Bennett Bernard - Host
• Bradley Bernard - Host

Episode 40 opens with Brad’s dirty-30 recap from Big Sur: hiking, Japanese hot baths, unlimited food, and a first falconry experience before the brothers jump into two meaningful AI releases. They break down Cursor 3’s move to a fully agent-first interface, why that changes the feel of an AI IDE, and how Google’s Gemma 4 models look in the small-model and on-device race. There’s also a practical discussion about Apple, local inference in iOS 26, and what better on-device models could unlock for products like SplitMyExpenses.

Then the episode gets into one of the most interesting collisions in tech right now: AI tax prep. Using Daniel Vassallo’s thread as the spark, Ben brings the CPA perspective, Brad brings the builder perspective, and together they unpack customer experience, trust, knowledge work, and what AI still misses. The back half covers why MCP servers suddenly feel useful again, the Axios and LiteLLM supply-chain scares, practical OWASP-style security audits, Gary Tan’s gstack claims, a joking SplitMyExpenses sponsor read, and quick bookmarks on iOS reverse-engineering tools and Google’s latest quantum-and-crypto warning.

Chapters:
00:00 Big Sur birthday and falconry
02:38 Cursor 3 goes agent-first
04:04 Gemma 4 on-device push
08:42 AI taxes and CPA backlash
18:09 G-Stack versus code quality
25:23 MCP servers make a comeback
33:10 Axios breach and AI audits
40:50 TBPN jokes and sponsor banter
44:04 Bookmarks: iPhone hacks and quantum

Links:
- SplitMyExpenses
- Feross on the Axios attack
- Daniel Vassallo AI tax-prep thread
- gstack by Gary Tan
- App Store Connect CLI
- Hopper disassembler MCP

#BreakevenBrothers #AICoding #CursorAI #Gemma4 #LocalAI #MCPServers #TaxTech #SupplyChainAttack #OWASP #DeveloperTools

Creators & Guests

• Bennett Bernard - Host
• Bradley Bernard - Host