I bookmark a lot of posts on X about AI, but I never seem to revisit them. So I had an idea to turn those bookmarks into AI experiments. But I didn’t want to go through these bookmarks manually. I wanted to use them to generate AI experiment ideas automatically.
So I started with what I do most of these days, I open Codex and start planning. We discussed some things and the plan it came up with was a one-shot plan. No need to change anything, that was a first. I let Codex execute the plan immediately.
This time I chose to have a Python script created in the CLI (command line interface) because I like running things in the terminal.
The thing that impressed me most was the way it included a doctor command. This was a nice touch. The script could diagnose its own environment before running. The result was as follows:
hugo@MacBookPro X bookmarks to experiments % python3 -m xbkexp doctor
[OK] npx available: Found on PATH
[OK] playwright wrapper: Found executable at /Users/hugo/Development/X bookmarks to experiments/scripts/playwright_cli.sh
[OK] OPENAI_API_KEY: Present in environment
[OK] playwright bootstrap: Playwright CLI resolved
All checks passed.
hugo@MacBookPro X bookmarks to experiments %
After the doctor check passed, I tried the tool. I got some errors in the way it handled the opening of the browser via Playwright. Playwright is a tool that allows AI systems to control a browser. After another iteration Playwright was functioning and the browser was opened with the login screen.
Then the problems started appearing, as I needed to log in every time. The session was never saved. And after a few more iterations with Codex to fix some bugs I got this dreaded message:
I was blocked from trying again. I asked Codex how to deal with this message and it basically told me to wait 12-24 hours before trying again. I am doing exactly that now, because I do not want to risk bricking my X account.
Key insight
AI writes code quickly, and bug fix iterations happen in seconds instead of minutes or hours. A second order effect of this speed is that things like login attempts or API calls also happen much faster.
Systems that normally tolerate occasional mistakes now see many attempts in a very short time. Because of that they also trigger timeouts or blocks much sooner.