Runme

Runme is an open-source work-notebook program that keeps a single document stacking up, in order, what you want to do, the command you ran to do it, and the result that came out. Here, "notebook" doesn't mean a laptop you carry around — it means a document where you write down, step by step like a lab notebook, "what was tried - how it was run - what the result was."

Usually a person fills in this kind of document by hand. But Runme is designed so an AI agent can fill it in instead. A person writes a short goal in the first cell, and the agent picks up that goal, runs the command, and fills the result into the next cell. The person just watches the progress and steps in only at points where a judgment call is needed — for example, when the prepared work environment falls short and a different approach needs to be chosen.

Runme is a lightweight app that runs entirely in the web browser with no server of its own, and the finished document stays in storage like Google Drive. That way, an agent handling a similar task next time can find and reference the old document, so the judgment calls and context built up once don't disappear into a chat window.

The article introduces it by saying: "On the OpenAI developer blog... they're automating this with Codex and the open-source notebook app 'Runme.'" Two points are easy to mix up here — first, "notebook" doesn't mean a laptop, but a working document that stacks up code and results together, like a Jupyter notebook. Second, Runme isn't a product made by OpenAI; it's a separate open-source project that was simply introduced as a tool an OpenAI engineer uses alongside Codex.

1. Read the description of the github.com/runmedev/web repository to get a sense of what kind of document this is.
2. Create a markdown file and write, in the top cell, a one-sentence goal for the task you want to do.
3. Ask a coding agent (such as Codex) to open this file and fill in the following cells with commands and results according to the goal.
4. When you hit a snag, look at the alternatives the agent suggests and make the call yourself.