There's a Chinese Codex alternative getting some heat lately.

2026-07-03 08:30

There's a Chinese Codex alternative getting some heat lately. Tencent's WorkBuddy. Non-technical roles are buzzing about it. I tried it: basically Codex minus the install headache. No API keys, no subscription setup. Just open it and it works. Agent backend is reportedly OpenClaw in Sandbox. Free tier gives you 500 credits a month while they're running the trial giveaway. Desktop app. You talk to it in natural language. Merge spreadsheets, build a slide deck, clean up folders, write reports, search competitors. Comes with a library of user-shared agents and skills. Scheduled automation works. You can connect it to outside messaging tools too.

i turned my subtitle tool into an agent skill

built a subtitle recognition saas last year. openclaw dropped and it was dead before launch. a lot of people asked why i let it die. general agents just ate the use case. simple workflows got replaced overnight, and the tools behind them flipped from user-facing products to agent. no ui, no onboarding, just something an agent can read. subtitles are the clearest example of this. when a person does the work you need a real product. when an agent does it you need a skill it can follow. so i built one. give it audio + the original script. offline whisper handles the transcription, an llm figures out the timestamps and proofreads against the original, and it gives you back an srt file. 🔗 github.com/haoyiyin/easy-subtitle

2026-07-03

grok is actually really good

been using it for a while. no browser access and no knowledge base, but it replaces most of what i used manus for. built-in sandbox lets you install skills and run scripts natively. search is better than gemini too. real-time info with no lag.

2026-07-03

I stuffed an agent into an Android phone.

You've probably run into those short videos lately where an agent drives a phone around by itself. This one is called Mika, and it's a free open-source project. It's an Android app that works in the background through accessibility mode, so it can use pretty much any other app you have installed. Reply to someone on WeChat, scroll Xiaohongshu, drop something in a cart and check out. It finds the buttons by looking at the screen. There's no API to wire up, and it doesn't care what resolution your phone is. When it reaches a payment step or a captcha it stops and lets you finish. 🔗 github.com/wangzan101/Mika

2026-11-01

My product went profitable, and something in me broke.

Someone on Xiaohongshu posted a while back that she sells phone keyboard skins she made with Codex. Eight, ten yuan a pack. Over a thousand a month. I've been at mine for months. October: a few hundred copies, $1,200 gross. Platform fee 30%, tax 10%, so 60% should have landed. It came to just over a thousand dollars. I still don't know how the math pulled that off. I have an overseas bank account. Once lost $500 to a wire transfer off one. I'd still tell you to take payout through WorldFirst: less hassle, lower fees. You can also get a Hong Kong USD credit card tied to it that spends your WorldFirst balance directly. Digital card is free. Physical is $4. Mainland purchases under ¥200 skip the processing fee, and right now there's 1% cashback.

2026-11-01