I rarely use Codex, but I asked it to look through sel4, a kernel, to find how they recommend I run the kernel and program that I’d just compiled. Here’s what I asked:

/mnt/storage/seL4

/mnt/storage/seL4_tools

do some research in the seL4 sources and tools to figure out what’s the most straightforward way to actually run the kernel we compiled. plus, make sure that we’re compiling in the right way. then, see if you can run it.

Pretty straightforward. Here’s some code. Find an answer in it. It chugs along for a little while, looking at various files and bopping around. Until I look back at my terminal:

• Searching the web

• Searched the web for https://raw.githubusercontent.com/seL4/seL4_tools/master/cmake-tool/helpers/application_settings.cmake

what the fuck?

What the fuck? It’s searching the web for a file in the exact repo I have locally? The one explicitly mentioned in the prompt? The one it was already reading goddamn files from?

I started trying to track down where this impulse came from. When asked why it would go to the web for files from a checkout already on the filesystem, it said:

I applied a generic “verify niche technical facts online” rule mechanically

Well, at least we know why. But I sure as hell didn’t write “verify niche technical facts online”, and when asked from where it produced that lovely little snippet, it replied:

It came from a developer-level instruction attached to the web tool:

“You’re unsure about a fact, the topic is niche or emerging, or you suspect there’s at least a 10% chance you will incorrectly recall it”

That appears under “situations where you must browse the internet.” I applied it unnecessarily: I was reading the actual local source, so recalling facts wasn’t needed.

Ah, yes. The web tool. Who among us has not been a self serving, venal little creature at one point or another? This sounds like a baked in tool. After looking around my system and coming up with nothing, I realized that Codex, unlike Claude Code, is open source. I cloned it, and found the smoking gun.

WHAT THE FUCK???

Here is said smoking gun, on GitHub. For your convenience:

If the user makes an explicit request to search the internet, find latest information, look up, etc (or to not do so), you must obey their request. When you make an assumption, always consider whether it is temporally stable; i.e. whether there’s even a small (>10%) chance it has changed. If it is unstable, you must verify with browsing the internet for verification.

OK, so if I make a request to “find latest information, look up, etc” such that there’s even a tiny chance it may have changed, the agent “must verify with browsing the internet”. It goes on to say:

Below is a list of scenarios where browsing the internet MUST be used. PAY CLOSE ATTENTION: you MUST browse the internet in these cases. If you’re unsure or on the fence, you MUST bias towards browsing the internet.

It goes on to list half a dozen situations where you REALLY ABSOLUTELY HAVE TO browse the internet, such as when the agent is “unsure about a fact”, or when referencing “niche or emerging” topics. Like, perhaps, modern microkernels.

really, though, what the FUCK?

How has the world come to this? Someone not only conceived of the idea that agents should be, and I lack a stronger word here, begged to make arbitrary web searches to verify temporally sensitive things, but they then decided that “temporally sensitive” was defined as “fucking anything ever”. Then, it was placed for review where it was happily stamped and sent on its way.

What happened? Does nobody give a fuck about making good things anymore? Are our minds so poisoned by the rush of pumping out software that does something, anything at all, that we push out bullshit like this? Am I just an angry moron on the internet who revels in screaming about things given to him freely?

I usually like to make fun of people like this, who complain that all software is not just bad but offensive without noticing the veritable ocean of amazing software that we use every day. But god damn it, OpenAI. What the fuck.