At the start of May, OpenAI released a playful feature inside its Codex desktop app for creating a virtual pet. This silly little addition solved my biggest challenge with Codex: what should I do with it? My first real task with Codex was putting together a virtual Lil Finder Guy for fun. A month later, I’m using two Mac apps that Codex built at my direction. Toying around with Codex Pets was the gateway for me to better understand its capabilities. Both Mac apps are just for my use and not intended for distribution, but that’s just a choice and not a Codex limitation. They’re genuinely usable and useful software applications that serve my needs. One tool is called Flow, and it just helps me track activity and changes around the App Store. Another offers a better experience with using a social network on the Mac without certain constraints of Chrome, like minimum window width. The experience taught me just how much these tools have changed since this time last year as well.…