codex without a laptop
I build Yado, an iOS app that runs Codex in the cloud on your own ChatGPT subscription — so nothing of yours has to be running. No laptop, no VPS, no server. This page is the honest version of how it works and what it costs.
why I built it
My time in front of a laptop is scarce, and I’m solo against funded startups, so speed is my only edge. I built the version where the work happens without me sitting anywhere in particular. The longer version of that story is on the other flagship; this page is about Codex.
how it works
- Sign in with GitHub. Yado starts a cloud container for you — a real Linux box with your repos cloned into it.
- Sign in with ChatGPT once, from the phone. It’s your subscription: OpenAI bills your usage, I don’t. Codex runs on the box, not through an API key.
- Pick your agent in settings. One is active at a time, and the choice applies to the next session you open — sessions already running keep the agent they started with.
- Work in a chat UI built for the phone. Codex’s reasoning, commands, file changes and plan steps all render as you’d expect.
- It keeps going when you lock your phone. A push finds you when it’s done.
- Preview your changes live — the app you just built opens running on your phone.
what it costs
$19/month, 7-day free trial, everything included. The AI itself isn’t part of that: Codex runs on your own ChatGPT subscription, so OpenAI bills your usage directly and I never touch it.
the honest part
- Yes, it’s a wrapper. The value is the setup you never do and the mobile-specific work: chat mode, sessions, push, voice, live preview.
- You bring your own ChatGPT subscription — that’s a real prerequisite, which is why Yado asks you to sign into your agent before it asks you to pay.
- iOS only, as of August 2026.
- Parallel sessions cap at two.
- Security, plainly: your code lives in an ephemeral per-user container while you work, and conversations are encrypted at rest — but it runs on my infrastructure, so in principle I could access it. The mitigations: containers clear out often, everything sensitive is encrypted, your ChatGPT account stays yours (OpenAI bills you directly; I store only the login token, encrypted), and you can delete everything. Details in the privacy policy.
- If your laptop is on anyway, a mirror like Happy or Omnara runs Codex too, and both are free or have a free core. They need a machine of yours awake; that’s the whole trade.