Vaibhav (VB), a member of the OpenAI Codex team, has published a set of "self-distillation" prompts. You just paste it into Codex, and it will automatically comb through your past sessions, find the things you keep doing manually over and over, and package them into reusable tools for you.

The method isn't limited to coding scenarios: any repetitive action in daily work — writing, operations, planning — can be identified and automated. This article provides the complete prompts and instructions for using them.

Who it's for: Codex users (the free tier works), and anyone who wants to eliminate repetitive daily work.

What Is Codex Self-Distillation

Put simply, you let Codex "review its own work records," find out which tasks have been repeated, and then automate them.

The packaged results come in four forms:

• Skill: fixed routines that repeat weekly
• Custom Subagent: investigation tasks that need a dedicated role
• Automation: scheduled checks that run without anyone watching
• Skip: one-offs with fuzzy boundaries — leave those alone for now

Preparation Before You Start

• An OpenAI account with Codex access enabled
• At least a few days to a few weeks of Codex usage history (the more data, the better the results)
• 5 minutes

Step 1: Use the 1.0 Prompt (Quick Version)

This is the original 9-line prompt, good for getting started quickly:

Look through my recent sessions and identify repeated workflows or repeated requests.

For the things I've been doing manually, make recommendations:

1. If it's a reusable workflow, create a skill;
2. If it's a bounded role or investigation task, create a custom subagent.

Focus on practical work like CI failures, PR reviews, changelogs, documentation updates, release prep, debugging, and test triage.

Only create what's useful, and keep it lean.

Paste this straight into Codex and it will start analyzing your session history and making suggestions.

Tip: The 1.0 version leans toward coding scenarios. If you're not a programmer, go straight to the 2.0 version.

Step 2: Use the 2.0 Prompt (Recommended Version)

Based on community feedback, VB iterated the prompt into a more comprehensive 2.0 version, covering coding, research, writing, planning, communication, operations, and nearly every other work scenario:

Review my work records from the past 30 days and identify repeated manual workflows worth packaging.

Use the following data sources in priority order:
- Recent Codex sessions and task summaries
- Codex Memories and summary records, to find patterns repeated across sessions
- If Chronicle is enabled, use it to find repetitive work outside Codex (for discovery only; confirm important details back in the original system)
- Existing skills, custom agents, and automations — prefer reusing or extending them rather than reinventing the wheel.

Cast a wide net: coding, research, writing, planning, communication, operations, analysis, and personal tasks all count.

Act only when all of the following conditions hold:
1. It has happened at least twice, or is clearly likely to recur and costly to redo from scratch;
2. It has stable inputs, a repeatable process, and a clear output;
3. It would meaningfully improve speed, quality, or reliability;
4. Existing tooling doesn't already cover it.

Pick the smallest form that fits: Skill, Custom subagent, Automation, or Skip.

First output a candidate list, then create the high-confidence items, and finally tell me what you created, what you skipped, and what still needs more evidence.

Three Upgrades in 2.0 Over 1.0

Step 3: Review and Adjust the Results

When the analysis finishes, Codex outputs a list:

What you need to do:

1. Check the auto-created items: confirm whether the Skills/Subagents/Automations that Codex created automatically are accurate
2. Handle the "needs more evidence" items: these are the ones Codex isn't sure should be automated, so you need to judge them yourself
3. Delete what you don't need: not every repeated task is worth automating

A Hidden Trick: Use Codex to Optimize Your Home Network

Beyond self-distillation, Codex has another practical use: optimizing local network configuration. One user used Codex to boost their speed from 400Mbps to 900Mbps.

The prompt they used:

Help me see what can be improved about my network. My ISP says the bandwidth they provide is 1.2Gbps, but my actual speeds are far below that. Please diagnose and fix the problem.

Codex then automatically runs these diagnostic steps:

1. Run a speed test
2. Check DNS resolution times
3. Check MTU, packet loss, and Wi-Fi signal
4. Fix the problems it finds (flushing the DNS cache, optimizing network configuration, etc.)

Note: This approach mainly works for Windows users. Mac network configuration is fixed, so there's little Codex can do there. Linux is also worth a try.

Other Practical Codex Use Cases

Codex also supports the following features:

• Scheduled tasks: set up Automations to run checks on a recurring basis
• Self-improving skills: Skills keep getting better as they get used
• Subscription management: helps you sort out and cancel subscription services you don't need

FAQ

• Is Codex open source? Yes, Codex has been open-sourced.
• Do I need to pay? Codex has a free tier; basic usage costs nothing.
• What if the analysis results aren't accurate? The longer you've used it and the more session history there is, the more accurate the analysis. New users should start with the 1.0 version.
• Can non-technical people use it? The 2.0 prompt already covers writing, operations, and other non-coding scenarios, so anyone can use it.