Here's how it actually works — the full stack, the daily flow, and the philosophy that makes it all hold together.
Pieces OS Is My Brain
Everything starts with Pieces OS. It's not just a snippet manager. It's my long-term memory graph. Every clipboard event, every screenshot OCR, every browser tab, every Codex session, every ChatGPT conversation — Pieces captures it, indexes it, and makes it searchable.
When I open a project I haven't touched in 3 weeks, I don't have to remember where I left off. I ask my system to pull a morning brief, and it synthesizes what I accomplished, open errors, active projects, and 2–3 next actions.
Lapapi — Personal Mission Control
Lapapi is the hub. A macOS-first dashboard with that unmistakable mustache — my signature icon for the app that connects Pieces, Ollama, Codex, and whatever model I need.
Every morning, Lapapi runs a health check: connector status, dirty git states, Downloads clutter, system memory pressure. If something's wrong, it tells me. If everything's green, it gets out of the way.
Codex: The Builder Agent
Codex is where the real work happens. I recently removed Claude from my local-first stack entirely. Now: Pieces, Ollama, Apple local AI, and Codex project context only. Build passed. App relaunched. No regrets.
Specialization Over Generalization
I don't use one AI for everything. I use agents — specialized personas:
| Agent | Role |
|---|---|
| Hermes | Gateway / Telegram & Discord dispatch, cron jobs, infrastructure |
| Kartie | Code review, architecture decisions, system diagnostics |
| Neve-02 | Creative tasks, brand assets, Jez V marketing |
| Codex | Code generation, project scaffolding, deployment |
| Goose | Local inference, Ollama model management, extensions |
ChatGPT: The Strategic Layer
ChatGPT is where I think. Codex is where I build. Pieces remembers everything.
An Actual Day
- Morning brief (Lapapi + Pieces) → full context recovery
- Deep work (Codex) → reads AGENTS.md, implements next feature — zero prompting
- Creative sprint (ChatGPT + GPT Image 2) → brand assets, copy, positioning
- Evening wrap (Pieces memory capture) → the entire day's context is saved for tomorrow
Workflow Over Model
The model matters less than the workflow.
A mediocre model with perfect context routing beats a frontier model with zero memory. The model will change next month. Your workflow is what compounds.
If you're building with AI agents: invest in memory and routing before you invest in better models.