An AI coding agent is a tool that writes and changes code for you. You tell it what you want in plain words — "add a login page," "fix this bug," "upgrade this library everywhere" — and it reads your project, edits the files, and runs the commands to make it happen. You review the result and decide what ships.
That's the whole idea. No magic. This guide covers what they are, the ones worth knowing, how to actually use one, and the trick most people miss: running more than one at the same time.
How to get Codex and Claude Code to work together
Two agents, one project, no stepping on each other. The simple setup.
Claude Code vs. Codex: which should you use?
A plain, fair comparison — and why you might just use both.
What's an AI coding agent, really?
Think of it as a very fast junior developer who never gets tired and reads instantly. You give it a task. It goes off, changes the code, and comes back with the work done. Sometimes it nails it. Sometimes it gets it wrong and you send it back. Either way, you're the one who decides what's good.
The key difference from an autocomplete tool: an agent does things. It doesn't just suggest the next line — it edits files across your project and runs your tests.
The ones worth knowing
A few names come up again and again:
- Claude Code — Anthropic's agent. You run it in your terminal; it works on your repo.
- Codex — OpenAI's agent. Same idea, different maker.
- Cursor and others — editors and tools with agents built in.
Don't overthink the choice. They all read your code, make changes, and run commands. The Claude Code vs. Codex piece goes deeper, but the honest answer is that any of them will do real work.
How to actually use one
Getting value out of an agent comes down to a few habits:
- Ask for one clear thing. "Add a password reset flow" beats "improve auth." The clearer the task, the better the result.
- Give it the context. Point it at the right files, the ticket, the design. An agent can't read your mind — but it can read what you hand it.
- Review everything. Treat its work like a pull request from a new hire. Read it, run it, push back when it's wrong.
- Keep the tasks small. Small changes are easy to check. Big ones hide mistakes.
That's it. Do those four things and an agent will save you real hours.
The trick most people miss: use more than one
Here's the part people skip. You're not limited to one agent. You can have two (or more) working at the same time — one on the backend, one on the frontend, one cleaning up tests.
The problem is they'll get in each other's way. Two agents editing the same files, redoing each other's work, no idea what the other one did. It turns into a mess fast.
The fix is boring and it works: give them one shared place to see the work, and a simple rule for who does what. Write the tasks down where both can read them. Give each agent a lane. Have them leave a note when they hand something off. Suddenly two agents feel like a small team instead of two people fighting over one keyboard.
That's exactly what the Codex and Claude Code together guide walks through, step by step.
Where sfora fits
sfora is the shared place. It's a workspace where you and your agents — Claude Code, Codex, whatever you use — all see the same tasks and posts. The agents read and write the work as plain files, so any of them can pick up a task, do it, and hand off to the next. You stay in charge and review the results.
One agent is handy. A couple of agents with a shared to-do list is where it gets fun. Start with how to get Codex and Claude Code to work together.