I Made an OpenAI PM Teach Me Codex For 67 Minutes

Abhi Muchhal is an International Growth PM at OpenAI, the person responsible for how ChatGPT grows in India, Brazil, Japan, and every market outside the US. Before OpenAI, he was a PM at Meta on election integrity, a growth PM at Nubank across Brazil, Mexico, and Colombia, and a founder building real-time translation tools on the OpenAI API. In this episode, he opens his actual Codex setup on camera: the harness, the automations, the prompts that work, and the ones that failed before he figured it out. Full Writeup: https://www.news.aakashg.com/p/how-to-use-codex-like-an-openai-pm Transcript: https://www.aakashg.com/how-an-openai-pm-uses-codex-and-image-gen-at-work-and-in-his-personal-life/ --- Timestamps: 00:00 - Intro 01:55 - Episode begins 03:48 - What has Codex unlocked for your PM work? 05:34 - Live demo, building the international growth dashboard 10:04 - Ads 11:32 - How to build in Codex, inputs, outputs, and Playwright 14:52 - Moving away from PRDs to Codex prototypes 21:23 - The three automations running before his day starts 28:37 - WhatsApp computer use demo setup 30:06 - Ads 33:05 - Codex takes action inside WhatsApp in 68 seconds 37:00 - Building a 1040 tax filing app in Codex 43:42 - What drove ChatGPT to 900M weekly active users 47:18 - ImageGen 2, the biggest ELO jump of any model 59:26 - How to break into OpenAI as a PM 1:05:27 - Outro --- Thanks to our sponsors: 1. Bolt.new - Ship AI-powered products 10x faster - https://bolt.new/solutions/product-manager/?utm_source=Promoted&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=aakash-product-growth 2. Product Faculty - Get $550 off their #1 AI PM Certification with code AAKASH550C7 - https://maven.com/product-faculty/ai-product-management-certification?promoCode=AAKASH550C7 3. Customer.io - Send smarter messages using your product data - http://customer.io/productgrowth 4. Ariso - Ship AI agents and features faster, with fewer regressions - https://ariso.ai/aakash 5. Jira Product Discovery - Plan with purpose, ship with confidence - https://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/product-discovery --- Key Takeaways: 1. The harness is what separates Codex users from Codex runners - The connectors, the permissions model, and the skills layer are the three components that make Codex a system rather than a chat tool. Without all three, you are using an expensive autocomplete. 2. Generic prompts hit the wrong data - Abhi's team had separate B2C and B2B tables that both matched "tell me about weekly active users." The generic query returned the wrong answer every time. Specificity is the skill, name the exact dashboard and the exact metric, looks simple but saves a lot of time when you scale. 3. Three permission levels - Read tasks and Synthesis get full autonomy. Anything going to another human gets your eyes first. Treating permissions as binary, all control or all autonomy, breaks. 4. The person who cares most builds the skill - One OpenAI growth team built a skill that automates their entire experiment review process. It writes the hypothesis, monitors the run, and prepares the review doc. 5. Real automations run without you - Abhi runs three automations before he opens a single dashboard: a Slack triage, a 9:30AM self-refreshing growth dashboard pulling from 7-8 sources, and a weekly stakeholder update that writes its own first draft. He reviews, makes edits if needed, and sends. 6. Prototype before you document - Build the working prototype first, then write the companion FAQ. Showing engineers something that runs changes the conversation from whether to build to how to build it. 7. India is OpenAI's second largest market and under 10% of working adults are knowledge workers - The ChatGPT use case that drove US growth does not reach the same share of people in the markets driving the most new users. 8. The WhatsApp computer use loop ran in 68 seconds - Point Codex at the WhatsApp desktop app. It reads what you missed, identifies action items, checks your calendar, and types the draft. One tap to send. Every PM building for international markets should run this workflow. 9. Speaking evals is the key to breaking into a frontier lab - Name a capability you care about. Describe how you would measure it. Say how you would know if the model improved. You need to understand why they exist and what a good one measures. 10. Building something real is non-negotiable for frontier lab applications - Abhi had a live Chrome extension running on the OpenAI API at the time of his application. --- Where to find Abhi Muchhal: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/abhimuchhal/ OpenAI: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/openai/ Where to find Aakash: X: https://x.com/aakashgupta LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aagupta/ Newsletter: https://www.news.aakashg.com #AIPM #OpenAI #Codex --- About Product Growth: The world's largest podcast focused solely on product + growth, with over 200K+ listeners. Subscribe and turn on notifications.

Abhi MuchhalguestAakash Guptahost

May 31, 20261h 7mWatch on YouTube ↗

EPISODE INFO

Released: May 31, 2026
Duration: 1h 7m
Channel: Aakash Gupta
Watch on YouTube: ▶ Open ↗

EPISODE DESCRIPTION

Abhi Muchhal is an International Growth PM at OpenAI, the person responsible for how ChatGPT grows in India, Brazil, Japan, and every market outside the US. Before OpenAI, he was a PM at Meta on election integrity, a growth PM at Nubank across Brazil, Mexico, and Colombia, and a founder building real-time translation tools on the OpenAI API. In this episode, he opens his actual Codex setup on camera: the harness, the automations, the prompts that work, and the ones that failed before he figured it out. Full Writeup: https://www.news.aakashg.com/p/how-to-use-codex-like-an-openai-pm Transcript: https://www.aakashg.com/how-an-openai-pm-uses-codex-and-image-gen-at-work-and-in-his-personal-life/ --- Timestamps: 00:00 - Intro 01:55 - Episode begins 03:48 - What has Codex unlocked for your PM work? 05:34 - Live demo, building the international growth dashboard 10:04 - Ads 11:32 - How to build in Codex, inputs, outputs, and Playwright 14:52 - Moving away from PRDs to Codex prototypes 21:23 - The three automations running before his day starts 28:37 - WhatsApp computer use demo setup 30:06 - Ads 33:05 - Codex takes action inside WhatsApp in 68 seconds 37:00 - Building a 1040 tax filing app in Codex 43:42 - What drove ChatGPT to 900M weekly active users 47:18 - ImageGen 2, the biggest ELO jump of any model 59:26 - How to break into OpenAI as a PM 1:05:27 - Outro --- Thanks to our sponsors:
1. Bolt.new - Ship AI-powered products 10x faster - https://bolt.new/solutions/product-manager/?utm_source=Promoted&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=aakash-product-growth
1. Product Faculty - Get $550 off their #1 AI PM Certification with code AAKASH550C7 - https://maven.com/product-faculty/ai-product-management-certification?promoCode=AAKASH550C7
1. Customer.io - Send smarter messages using your product data - http://customer.io/productgrowth
1. Ariso - Ship AI agents and features faster, with fewer regressions - https://ariso.ai/aakash
1. Jira Product Discovery - Plan with purpose, ship with confidence - https://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/product-discovery --- Key Takeaways:
1. The harness is what separates Codex users from Codex runners - The connectors, the permissions model, and the skills layer are the three components that make Codex a system rather than a chat tool. Without all three, you are using an expensive autocomplete.
1. Generic prompts hit the wrong data - Abhi's team had separate B2C and B2B tables that both matched "tell me about weekly active users." The generic query returned the wrong answer every time. Specificity is the skill, name the exact dashboard and the exact metric, looks simple but saves a lot of time when you scale.
1. Three permission levels - Read tasks and Synthesis get full autonomy. Anything going to another human gets your eyes first. Treating permissions as binary, all control or all autonomy, breaks.
1. The person who cares most builds the skill - One OpenAI growth team built a skill that automates their entire experiment review process. It writes the hypothesis, monitors the run, and prepares the review doc.
1. Real automations run without you - Abhi runs three automations before he opens a single dashboard: a Slack triage, a 9:30AM self-refreshing growth dashboard pulling from 7-8 sources, and a weekly stakeholder update that writes its own first draft. He reviews, makes edits if needed, and sends.
1. Prototype before you document - Build the working prototype first, then write the companion FAQ. Showing engineers something that runs changes the conversation from whether to build to how to build it.
1. India is OpenAI's second largest market and under 10% of working adults are knowledge workers - The ChatGPT use case that drove US growth does not reach the same share of people in the markets driving the most new users.
1. The WhatsApp computer use loop ran in 68 seconds - Point Codex at the WhatsApp desktop app. It reads what you missed, identifies action items, checks your calendar, and types the draft. One tap to send. Every PM building for international markets should run this workflow.
1. Speaking evals is the key to breaking into a frontier lab - Name a capability you care about. Describe how you would measure it. Say how you would know if the model improved. You need to understand why they exist and what a good one measures.
1. Building something real is non-negotiable for frontier lab applications - Abhi had a live Chrome extension running on the OpenAI API at the time of his application. --- Where to find Abhi Muchhal: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/abhimuchhal/ OpenAI: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/openai/ Where to find Aakash: X: https://x.com/aakashgupta LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aagupta/ Newsletter: https://www.news.aakashg.com #AIPM #OpenAI #Codex --- About Product Growth: The world's largest podcast focused solely on product + growth, with over 200K+ listeners. Subscribe and turn on notifications.

SPEAKERS

Abhi Muchhal
guest
Product manager at OpenAI leading international growth, discussing Codex and product workflows.
Aakash Gupta
host
Podcast host and interviewer on product management and AI tooling.

EPISODE SUMMARY

In this episode of Aakash Gupta, featuring Abhi Muchhal and Aakash Gupta, I Made an OpenAI PM Teach Me Codex For 67 Minutes explores inside OpenAI PM workflows: Codex agents, prototypes, global growth insights Codex is positioned as the shift from chatbot to collaborator to agent, enabling PMs to delegate end-to-end tasks and reclaim hours from repetitive work.

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