If you’re puzzled as to why this exists, imagine that, out of the goodness of your heart, you donate $230 to OpenAI to support their mission of rear ending the singularity, and receive Codex Micro memorabilia as a token of appreciation.
How is this more expensive than a Stream Deck? Shouldn't OpenAI be able to undercut existing software / hardware stacks due to how automated their engineering team is?
Wouldn't surprise me if the real purpose of this is to get a physical object on your desk that makes you constantly think about Codex -- either babysitting your currently-running agents when it's lit up and running, or subconsciously bullying / shaming you into using Codex if you're not right at this very moment.
That's the key, a physical object is much more easily made part of a devs identity.
Projecting a hacker image has become very fashion based. e.g., some devs love their clickity-clackity keyboards with LEDs, others have those all-blacks ones with nothing on the keys.
If anyone is looking at this thinking it looks pretty and wants to check out Work Louder's keyboards, let me save you the time. Their keyboards must be made by designers who do not type much because they are both not pleasant to type on and not very high-quality.
The Nomad [E] might be one of the worst keyboards I've ever purchased, and I owned one of the original butterfly switch MacBooks.
I was interested in their knob1, and, if you go to their website today it still says pre-order with shipping in August 2025 (stuck in the past), at this point I accepted it's vaporware [1]
For the Nomad: The caps slightly rotate. If you look at them from the side profile, they are also all varying heights. I found enough variance in the physical layout of keys that I was constantly making mistakes and pressing multiple keys simultaneously. It has this gimmicky magnetic riser on the back which the magnets fell out of. The display is just a gimmick but has a fun Tamagotchi-type thing that analyzes WPM, so that's cool at least.
The company itself had crazy production delays on both the Nomad and the Knob1, and seem to depend on hypebeast marketing. For $400 you would expect a very premium product and it's easy to argue that they missed the mark pretty hard.
Oh I also placed a pre-order and they refused to cancel after many delays. Unfortunately after that point it was too late for a chargeback.
Never heard of work louder, but it sounds like an idea I used to joke with coworkers about, around making a clickly keyboard with an amplifier and speaker to passive-aggressively demonstrate how annoying the clicky keyboards are in a high density office environment.
This is really pretty, but I'm surprised it doesn't have a microphone. I know it's just rebranding the existing work louder creator keyboard, but a mic would really, really help with this product. Especially one that is really effective at Wispr Flow-type speaking.
RE: the joystick. They should have gone with the Playdate's crank instead, CrankGPT style.
Anyway, I think it's all a fun marketing thing. A desk toy for folks with disposable income. I imagine they'll sell out, given the limited release and then they'll be on eBay.
It's not clear why this physical object is a better solution to the problem than, say, a window on your screen. Feels like more of a hobby project than something that provides $230 of value.
I know a lot of people who really like things like the Stream Deck. This seems similar to that kind of a concept. I'd probably take the Stream Deck over this though, its a good bit cheaper and each button has a little screen on it. Having some physical knobs is an interesting twist on it though.
This is not really intended as a product you will use today.
This is an intentionally provocative statement on the future of work, where your keyboard is not supplemented by, but rather replaced by a dozen or so buttons for prompting (via voice), reviewing, approving or rejecting.
Codex Micro is a workstation controller for the knowledge worker in sama's 2030 fever dream. I'm not even entirely sure I disagree.
I'm currently supporting (a couple hours a week) an exec who has mostly automated his workflow via vibe coding (the rest largely failed - not everyone can make the leap, and those that do are largely marginal) his workflow is largely a VS code window with the git commit/sync button on the left, and 2-20 codex/claude tabs in the main window on the right. I think he could actually make use of this sort of thing. Extremely small sample group but I'd estimate 1/300 people in a tech centric location like downtown SF. Globally it would be a tiny tiny fraction of that number lol. The venn diagram overlap of people who this would be useful for, vs people who have already vibe-coded their own macro keyboard with a streamdeck (myself included) is probably a pretty strong overlap. It's an amusing marketing gimmick, and historical artifact, if nothing else.
yeah, they are barely hanging on. they only raised $144 billion over 14 rounds. who knows if they will ever get any more. we should all chip in for a t-shirt.
Great question - nothing. I was a little surprised to see it doesn't even have a microphone or speaker - that means regardless of whatever compute is available (esp32 is pretty common in the $30 price class for smart assistants) this can never be a standalone device.
This is a rebranded/reskinned WORK LOUDER Creator Micro 2 btw (https://worklouder.cc/creator-micro-2). Great device if you're into expensive tech toys (a la Teenage Engineering), but if you were waiting for a big OpenAI hardware reveal sorry to disappoint.
I own an elgato Stream Deck (somewhere in a drawer), I love the concept of keys being a display but the keys are VERY mushy. Still a better deal and a way more versatile device than that Codex Micro pad.
Now that I think about it, I think I'd enjoy using streamdeck more if it was just a USB touchscreen thing maybe with some vibration for tactile feel with the same UI.
I'm curious who the target audience is. As a developer I already spend all day at my keyboard, so I'm not yet convinced dedicated hardware is faster than a desktop app. I'd love to hear from people who've actually used it.
As someone with a few unused Teenage Engineering things. The real answer is probably rich tech people who love having things that make people say "I'm not sure who the target audience is".
I set up an old Stream Deck to do the same thing. I stopped using it after a few days. This design looks great though, status lights are a nice touch. YouTube vibe coders will love it, traditional devs will keep MacGyvering their own toys.
I think people who want to project a 'cracked' (god I hate that word) agentic engineer vibe. But my experience with basically everyone in my immediate vicinity, is that people have no respect or awe for the 'tell the robot to do the thing' workflow.
I see it as another iteration of the wave that had everyone controlling agents directly from a chat app like slack. It isn't actually a more effective way to reach flow state, exchange information faster, and move your development projects forward to greater success, its simply a novel, oddly satisfying input mechanism, at least for the first day.
Which is no different than when the iphone first came out, the basic concept of touch screens was endlessly novel as an input and output device. That novelty did a lot more heavy lifting than what we can now see in hindsight was appropriate, because now many of us won't be able to control the temperature in our cars after the touch screen fails.
I think its the same underlying mechanism that explains why I, a person who has never recorded or mixed audio in a studio, and a person who can know for certain that purchasing a 24 channel mixing console isn't going to faclilitate my career change or even hobby development. But part of me is still viscerally certain that my life would be fuller if I purchased a 24 channel mixing console.
I don't need a legitimate reason to own a tool, or a problem I would fix with it, to fantasize about using that tool.
After a few minutes on the site, I have no clue what this is for. A keyboard that interacts with Codex? That’s just a software feature, why am I paying $230 for hotkeys?
Special purpose keyboards can make sense (see e.g. music editing keyboards with sliders and volume knobs), but I'm with you that in this case the website totally fails at making a case for it.
just like the general mechanical keyboard community... over expensive hardware, sometimes not even shipping with friendly layers for rookies (like VIAL framework for configuring QMK) and oh! QUESTIONABLE ERGONOMIC DESIGNS like ortholinear arrangements for plank keyboards with 40% of the keys, the absurd goes on [0]
[0] i sell cheap handwired dactyl keyboards in Brazil
It isn't meant to sell like hot cakes. Work Louder is the keyboard equivalent of Teenage Engineering. They make expensive toys for silicon valley engineers.
I want very hard to agree with you but then I remember elgato has built a very successful business from a 8/12/16/... Macro keyboard for streamers so what do I know.
I'd debate that the custom LCD buttons made the difference... I've got a few macro keypads for some specific use cases, I ended up with a elgato for a -very- niche radio related use case and love it
The people who cannot DIY? There are a surprisingly large number of people who "code" in codex while being completely unable to write a single line of code themselves. Not that I approve, I think this will end in disaster (security or otherwise) and llm shines as a force multiplier not as a replacement, but I've long learned what's correct is not always what's selling.
on one hand...this looks cool/teenage engineering-esque. on the other...engineers have been infantilized forever now but this is a new level. it feels like my career has been dwindled down to ... what? a few colors and like 5 buttons? reminds me of something out of idiocracy a bit. just need a button that orders a nice juicy hamburger for me during my lunch break.
but jokes aside, I suppose you can look at this being sort of like a numpad in addition to your main keyboard so I see the point of this gimmicky thing
Oh for sure. It’s like Monster cables or audiophile stuff or other luxury goods. It’s entirely irrational. Though some people badly need it to be framed as perfectly rational.
Mech keyboards are closer to audiophile stuff than monster cables and luxury goods. The prices are generally commanded by low production volumes with high production quality. At least that's how the hobby used to be, I know its grown a lot and its much easier to find mass produced mechanical keyboards.
While I love a good piece of hardware with real buttons, I struggle to justify the money on this. If it supported Linux and was a bit cheaper I might splerge just to have a toy, but I'm definitely not switching to windows or mac just for this.
You could probably easily get Codex (CLI) to vibe code Linux support tbh. It's probably just a regular USB HID device. The main problem is that right now it only works with the GUI Codex App which doesn't have official Linux support.
Teenage Engineering makes a lot of products that are basically just a grid of buttons and knobs. It's an obvious comparison to make, even if you disagree on the style/soul etc. Like the OP-1 is also a rectangle of buttons, and even the style of the keycap itself can draw some comparisons (it is a rounded square with a circle in it and an abstract symbol on it): https://teenage.engineering/products/op-1
First question; if theres a knob to adjust thinking level, and I can switch between agents, what if I turn down the knob for one agent and switch to another? Do I just insta-lobotomize it?
Looks fun, but I don't quite understand this product:
- Do the buttons map to configurable skills / prompts?
- Is it meant to be used remotely with some independence (like codex remote), or is it a peripheral like a trackpad?
Pretty sure I could just vibe code this with my old Elgato Stream Deck. As a bonus, it wouldn't become eminently useless if I swap to any other model provider.
This is partially an on-ramp for young people. No experience? Not sure where to start? Buy this gadget! Hook it up to your machine then take lessons on how to use it. All in the OpenAI ecosystem, of course.
Best outcome for OpenAI is that this becomes a status symbol / cool shiny thing that "leet" devs have.
For someone with a lot of experience already, this looks semi-retarded. For a newbie / newcomer it looks like someone finally thought of them.
Things you do if you definitely are focused on the a Trillion USD industry and SuperDuperUltraMega AGI is 100% possible and what you are fully committed to. Next they’ll spend Millions on a podcast that fails to get 50k hits on YouTube or a design firm whose biggest claim to fame is creating a Ferrari whose interior looks like a Magic Mouse. Say what you want about Anthropic, their Aquihires and interpretability investments at least make sense for an LLM lab.
"OpenAI will launch a portable, screen-free smart speaker as its first consumer hardware product, Bloomberg News has reported, days after Apple sued the AI start-up and two former employees of the iPhone maker for trade-secret theft." [1]
This is the lamest possible implementation, exactly what I would expect from openAI. Nothing about it is interesting or unique or really leverages the power of LLMs to make a new experience.
Why not a Stream Deck? I own 3 stream decks, and they are incredibly useful. Not only for coding, but windows controlling, shortcuts for anything. And the best part is that there are small screens you can customize.
i guess this is cool if you are going to expense it as a business but $250 is insane. I'm going to wait for the temu version with the usual hidden mic and phone-home feature