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The ChatGPT/Codex app bundles a full copy of LibreOffice

494 points by timpera 15d ago

isityettime 15d ago
The new app is an unbelievable mess. Settings are senselessly organized, too. The whole thing has this aesthetic slickness and then underneath it's like the people who make it have never even used it. It's not surprising that it's pulled in absolutely massive dependencies, although I'm not sure it's the wrong call on some operating systems. LibreOffice is pretty tried and true.
- jbird99 15d ago
  Almost like it's... vibe coded.
  - senectus1 15d ago
    yeah, that seems obvious by now.
  - deleted 15d ago
    [deleted]
- yeutterg 15d ago
  Personally, I like the 3-pane organization (sidebar, chat, browser). I turned ChatGPT into my bookkeeper and social post writing/kanban space, and it works well for these script+browser workflows on desktop. However, all of this is confusing: - the ChatGPT/Codex split on desktop - Chat/Work split on mobile - how you remotely access each chat from your phone (some of my most valuable chats are buried in Remote) - which chats propagate from device to device, and which remain on that device
  - nobody_r_knows 15d ago
    [dead]
  - pests 15d ago
    > - the ChatGPT/Codex split on desktop Do tell, cause I run the "ChatGPT" program on Windows to use both the normal Chat and Codex (side menu items). I think its a more recent change.
    - yeutterg 14d ago
      This is from a recent update, and I'm on macOS. I had to re-download it, not just update from within the app. This new version has tabs for ChatGPT and Codex. The ChatGPT tab seems way less powerful; Codex is basically a coding agent with a UI and browser built in. Pretty sure this is the old Codex app with the ChatGPT tab bolted on. It's great in some ways, but needs work in others.
- written-beyond 15d ago
  HOW DOES IT WORK FOR YOU PEOPLE?! Istg on windows, I can't get codex app, new chatgpt or chatgpt classic to work without hanging on even a moderately sized chat. I tried all of the different tricks people recommended but that shit just crawls. It was stable at some point, classic that is, but then it started being a laggy mess. I've uninstalled new chatgpt/codex app. I can't access phone chats on it, I can't use the desktop allocated chat messages on it. I have to use up codex limits. I am so surprised that OpenAI ships that hot garbage on windows.
  - johaugum 15d ago
    Mac Neo can be had for $600 now, and it runs Codex incredibly well! But even on the Windows machine, if you Tailscale into a free tier VM for the workloads, you'd probably have a much better time. Just leave Codex itself on your machine, if you set up computer use it will happily set up all of this for you while you have lunch.
    - timpera 14d ago
      Do you have any tips for running Codex on the Macbook Neo? Have you changed any setting? On mine, it stutters on every single chat, and I don't even have any plugins installed.
      - johaugum 14d ago
        Are you on the recent update that handles long chat sessions much better? That made a big difference. Biasing towards lightweight and fast tool alternatives (uv over pip, bun over npm, ripgrep over grep, etc). If that still doesn't resolve it, a free tier VM might be the move. I suspect OpenAI will be bundling some kind of VM with their new Astra release, which Sama said yesterday will be released soon (this week maybe?). If this new model supports much longer running tasks, you'll want a dedicated box that can run 24/7 even when your Neo is closed and asleep anyway.
    - NBJack 14d ago
      > Mac Neo can be had for $600 now Maybe a used one? https://www.apple.com/macbook-neo/ https://www.apple.com/macbook-neo/ has it for ~$700
- Razengan 15d ago
  And when you go to their forums it says "This forum is not for discussing the ChatGPT App..." ..like excuse me? Where the fuck else would we post feedback about it?
  - Maken 15d ago
    Just tell ChatGPT what changes you want in the next version.
- RestartKernel 15d ago
  They removed the global shortcut to show a portable chat overlay. That one entrypoint must've been the source of at least 80% of my chats, yet apparently it was considered too vestigial to keep.
  - mkesper 15d ago
    Can it be reassigned under Settings / Keyboard shortcuts?
    - isityettime 15d ago
      Yes, although it's buried among a huge number of other shortcuts now, and not particularly easy to search for.
      - RestartKernel 14d ago
        Did they restore the functionality itself? Last time I checked the overlay was just straight up not a feature anymore.
- enraged_camel 15d ago
  The thing that blows my mind about it is that they straight up copied Claude Code and tried to frame it as some sort of incredible accomplishment. There are no new ideas, no insightful UI/UX paradigms, no killer features. They say money can't buy taste. The ChatGPT/Codex app is proof that it cannot buy creativity either.
  - steve1977 15d ago
    Codex, clone Claude Code, make no mistakes they also didn't make.
  - pdantix 15d ago
    which is really funny/sad when you see openai staff doing victory laps whenever claude code copies one or two small codex features like /goal.
- KronisLV 15d ago
  > The new app is an unbelievable mess. How so? On Windows, I like it (version 26.825.51511). Works fast (like modern Claude Code desktop, their old versions were bad), has pretty okay UI (could have an option for wider main text display, like ZCode added), allows you to change the fonts and shells and some of the layout stuff. I mean currently I have Paseo hooked up to OpenCode that runs the actual models and often that works a bit better for me, but as a standalone desktop offering, the ChatGPT app has been okay in my experience. I can kinda see why ZCode copied them a bunch (though ZCode also lets you run 3rd party models, which is actually preferable to me). I do like the idea that Claude Code desktop had in the earlier versions, 3 tabs - chat, work, code, except they kinda went in the direction of merging chat and work which was very ehhhh. The ChatGPT app doesn't even have a proper split between chat and work/code.
- Schlagbohrer 15d ago
  Probably vibe coded right?
- prmph 14d ago
  Where are the AI-will-render-software-engineers-obsolete and/or vibe-coding apologists? They can make all kinds of nice-sounding arguments, but if AI is contributing to a degradation in product quality, their arguments cannot stand up to the reality we see with our own eyes. The proof of the pudding is in the eating, and all that. It is the same with Claude Code. Pretty much each change Anthropic makes to it now lowers its quality. Just yesterday they auto-updated it, and now backspace in the CLI does not work reliably. It also insert the enter key command when there is a line break in text that you are pasting, causing fragments of the prompt to be sent prematurely. What the heck! And pretty much all the regressions I have experienced this year have also not been fixed.
lennart-rth 15d ago
I suspect that it’s used in headless clip mode to reliably convert file formats back and forth.
topaztee 15d ago
spinning up an entire copy of libreoffice sounds super heavy?, if someone here is actually using chatgpt to edit docx documents then they can feel free to use us. vespper.com
- woadwarrior01 15d ago
  You want something heavier? They were trashing people's SSDs a few months ago. IDK if it's been resolved, yet. https://x.com/bdsqlsz/status/2067964486615810369 https://x.com/bdsqlsz/status/2067964486615810369
  - joquarky 15d ago
    DNS_PROBE_FINISHED_NXDOMAIN
wilg 15d ago
Presumably this is for ChatGPT Work? https://simonwillison.net/2026/Aug/30/understanding-chatgpt-work/ https://simonwillison.net/2026/Aug/30/understanding-chatgpt-...
soupspaces 15d ago
[dead]
monneyboi 15d ago
Imagine the enormous complexity of office file formats if your business is literally building coding models/agents and still you choose to bundle LibreOffice.
gfalcao 15d ago
Are they at least respecting the licenses (.i.e.: providing a verbatim copy of each license?)
Lucasoato 15d ago
Also in the newest app I think the transcription feature is unusable. Ok, I can have a shortcut to start and stop recording. Wow, cool! Ok, but where did the transcription go? In my clipboard? To my cursor? Hey? :(
FailMore 15d ago
(I made a similar comment in a different post by Simon Willison yesterday about GPT Work) I am unsure the direction that AI assisted document creation work will go in. I am opinionated and building something in the space. In this reply I discuss my view + what I have been building. My opinion is: We now have AI, this new amazing flexible tool. We can throw it at any problem. But in terms of document creation we have a choice between old fashioned siloed document formats (.pptx, .pdf, .xlsx, .docx, etc.) and a freshly rendered - slightly randomly styled - html site with some basic javascript within it. I think these combinations are odd and do not maximise the powers of AI. I've been building something called SmallDocs [0][1] which is a new take on work documents. It's all Markdown, but it always renders (100% privately) on the SmallDocs site. This means the SmallDocs renderer can convert recognised Markdown combinations into powerful traditional document formats [2]. For example, we convert a ```cells block into an in-line spreadsheet you can export to Excel. This gives an agent the ability to express itself with a great deal of depth and flexibility. For example, your agent can produce a single data analysis "SmallDoc" with text, charts, spreadsheets, etc. [3] I find that combining formats quickens the speed I can understand a topic. SmallDocs also have standardised and pretty boring styling. This means you spend less time understanding the layout of a flashy HTML page and more time on the content. I also believe a pre-determined rendering engine has a lot of advantages over a freslhy built HTML artifact. It allows you to build in lot's of useful defaults that the agent doesn't have to code from scratch. These can be small things, for example, every time your agent renders a Markdown table in SmallDocs you can instantly copy it as a CSV or a PNG. And these can be bigger things, such as a rich slides DSL with solid styling defaults, which saves your agents a lot of tokens and results in consistently attractive HTML slides [4]. (Slides can also be automatically exported to .pdf and .pptx.) I've been at it for a few months, and am still working on the project. I am looking for feedback and open source collaborators. Thanks for reading! [0] https://smalldocs.org https://smalldocs.org [1] https://github.com/espressoplease/smalldocs https://github.com/espressoplease/smalldocs [2] https://smalldocs.org/blogs/what-is-a-smalldoc https://smalldocs.org/blogs/what-is-a-smalldoc [3] https://smalldocs.org/s/46fWiAyF77T9c7tqYwAQqp#k=j78ZEOOrgo8fFAuHnxYiJi9MycoAhg7yFV2XqqweEgE https://smalldocs.org/s/46fWiAyF77T9c7tqYwAQqp#k=j78ZEOOrgo8... [4] https://smalldocs.org/s/QrmeWMsULGS871nXQYOacB#k=ubOHH9QtTWpJunRK86Z_dapXV4_WilXam6Z7Yx3xbQw https://smalldocs.org/s/QrmeWMsULGS871nXQYOacB#k=ubOHH9QtTWp... (And something totally different, your agent can also use SmallDocs to walk you through code files: https://smalldocs.org/s/JsI_-tWSH0UpSd_YXxVLPm#k=G5jLCYA4JUXo9wGsBCIy3CqVC2HUpkzhWo0tEgBwg0M https://smalldocs.org/s/JsI_-tWSH0UpSd_YXxVLPm#k=G5jLCYA4JUX...)
devy 15d ago
Now someone please use ChatGPT/Codex or Claude Code to rewrite the entire LibreOffice source into a single Rust binary already! Just like Jarred Sumner did for Bun [1] or Carmine Paolino did for Fastpotify [2] - granted there are some rough edges for sure, but the slim diet trimmed down and performance gains were wrothy. [1] https://bun.com/blog/bun-in-rust https://bun.com/blog/bun-in-rust [2] https://fastpotify.rocks/ https://fastpotify.rocks/
- what 15d ago
  > rewrite the entire LibreOffice source into a single Rust binary already! Why?
  - dustypotato 13d ago
    Java
robomartin 15d ago
Last time I used the Windows version it pegged all my cores at 100% usage for some reason. The machine became unusable. Instead I used Codex with JetBrains Rider (doing a C# project) and it worked flawlessly.
basil_io 15d ago
[dead]
throwaway613746 15d ago
[dead]
chemael 15d ago
[flagged]
xvilka 15d ago
Would be nice if they donate to LibreOffice then, to improve the support of various MS Office features in files, as well as comparison/diffing features. Win-win to everyone.
- j16sdiz 15d ago
  As much as I would hope they would... I don't think that's in character for sam altman.
  - mastermage 15d ago
    Sam "Its only Open until it does not benefit me anymore" Altman
- pocksuppet 15d ago
  [flagged]
  - dumberquestions 15d ago
    Good thing that "would be nice" doesn't entail that they have to.
    - YetAnotherNick 15d ago
      What does donation does for open source? Surely it wont come close to pay talented developers who create it. For cloud cost, there are few companies already giving generous free tier for open source. The only thing that donation could pay for is marketing e.g. events and meetups.
      - mksaunders2 15d ago
        That's not true at all. Donations are the biggest source of income for The Document Foundation, the non-profit behind LibreOffice, and have been used to pay developers who've joined the team in recent years: * Michael Weghorn (accessibility) * Jonathan Clark (language and scripting support) * Neil Roberts (scripting improvements) * Dan Williams (macOS support and general UI improvements)
luciana1u 15d ago
[flagged]
nicman23 15d ago
having had to manually save some xls files by editing their xml, yeah it makes sense
hexley19 15d ago
Bundling LibreOffice with a chatbot app feels like peak software bloat. My hard drive just let out an audible sigh.
kwhitlock 15d ago
Reminds me of pulling in an entire JS framework just for a single button. The bundle size must be something else.
- 4thguy 14d ago
  Reminds me of this joke https://medium.com/s/silicon-satire/i-peeked-into-my-node-modules-directory-and-you-wont-believe-what-happened-next-b89f63d21558 https://medium.com/s/silicon-satire/i-peeked-into-my-node-mo...
runtime_lens 15d ago
[dead]
onion2k 15d ago
I wonder if this says anything about the capabilities of AI. If it's better to bundle an entire headless office suite than ask your AI to build support for relatively well documented formats (or even to extract the file support parts it needs from Libra Office), that seems to suggest AI isn't as good as human devs just yet.
- aeon_ai 15d ago
  Or, it's dumb as hell to have an AI re-write Word every time it wants to output or present a document. But let's focus on how this validates the belief that "AI bad."
  - psjs 15d ago
    perhaps onion2k meant that openAI could’ve reimplemented it once in-house on their side for the codex app?
- artyomsv 15d ago
  [dead]
deleted 14d ago
[deleted]
pseudosavant 15d ago
Is that what it is using to render and manipulate MS Office documents? That'd explain the poor rendering of some of my files. Bundling all of LibreOffice seems like a pretty huge dependency.
- bs7280 15d ago
  What's ironic about this is, afaik there's no programmatic way to get a screenshot of a PowerPoint on windows other than opening up PowerPoint and screenshotting it. I only discovered this when I first tried out Anthropics official PowerPoint skill when it came out this winter. If anything happens from this, I hope it forces Microsoft to address some of its long standing hostile to power users issues so they can stay relevant in the world of AI tooling.
  - pseudosavant 15d ago
    This can absolutely be done programmatically. I just added the ability to do that using PowerPoint for Windows yesterday in my uv/python tool `markdown-pptx`. Codex added the functionality in less than 5 minutes. https://github.com/pseudosavant/markdown-pptx/ https://github.com/pseudosavant/markdown-pptx/
    - bs7280 14d ago
      Thanks for sharing, now im wondering if they did in fact grant my wish since I messed with this in January. Im lucky my job does not require me to make any pptx presentations.
    - pseudosavant 14d ago
      For those that are interested, this inspired me to create a tool just for exporting images and PDFs of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files. Check out the repo below, or if you have uv installed just run `uvx office-export skill install` or `uvx office-export --help` to check it out. It uses Office for Windows, so it is Windows only. I don't currently have access to a Mac machine, so I can't build in Mac support yet. https://github.com/pseudosavant/office-export https://github.com/pseudosavant/office-export
cpursley 15d ago
I still don’t understand why with all their cash these companies dont redo their apps in Rust or native. They are all so heavy and dog slow. There are already some very fast cross platform (wasm too!) libraries that can do what poppler does as well as parse and produce various office file formats. Because 2gb is crazy town, these things could be around 100mb, just throw some tokens at the problem.
- johnsmith1840 15d ago
  You should go actually try to make any basic automation work around these systems. They purposely obscured, google doc is another example they completly hide the dom! I spent months fighting word processing systems and ended up shipping libre. There's almost zero alternatives without that becoming your entire company.
- sudo_cowsay 15d ago
  Not that easy. Also, they have "priorities." Although their priorities are different than the users'.
  - cpursley 15d ago
    Just throw some tokens at the problem. I’ve vibed up a Rust Crux hybrid app that runs well on macOS, iPad and wasm and does some pretty complex xml manipulation and other document work. Absolutely smokes electron and you get native UI. Ref: https://redbadger.github.io/crux/ https://redbadger.github.io/crux/
    - verdverm 15d ago
      one does not just "throw tokens" at a problem, Ai is not that capable, and we are talking about MS Office file format, likely a NP hard problem
      - cpursley 15d ago
        AI is especially good at ports like this where there’s a known and well tested surface area.
simonw 15d ago
(This is more of a tweet than a blog post, it really wasn't written with Hacker News in mind.)
- benatkin 15d ago
  Indeed, but that likely wouldn't have stopped someone from submitting it with a misleading title. HN is known to get a lot of misleading titles submitted and to have to change them. The <title> tag is better, it doesn't say "a full copy". In the screenshot it shows "headless" in the filename. I would simply add the tiny detail of headless to the <title> and use this title for HN: Codex Bundles Headless LibreOffice
- MattDamonSpace 15d ago
  frankly how dare you
  - mrob 15d ago
    How is simonw to blame for somebody else submitting it to HN?
    - embedding-shape 15d ago
      True, I feel like the entire HN community is to blame for this, particularly pg and dang.
      - TZubiri 15d ago
        Thanks Obama
    - justsomehnguy 15d ago
      I have a feeling you should learn about Poe's law: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe's_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe's_law
      - 15d ago
dvrp 15d ago
And wait till you find out about @oai/walnut
- bcanzanella 15d ago
  do tell!
  - djriley 15d ago
    Walnut is the .NET and OpenXML backend. I think the point parent was trying to make it that it shouldn't be surprising Codex bundles runtimes for damn near everything.
mirzap 15d ago
I wonder why they didn't try to discover if the user already has those binaries and use them before downloading.
- duskdozer 15d ago
  Why would they? Storage [they don't have to pay for] is cheap! And just bundling it saves them time.
- LtWorf 15d ago
  Because they vibe coded it.
- NostraDavid 14d ago
  Preventing potential version/feature issues?
alex-moon 15d ago
Someone may need to explain to me what is wrong with this sorry. Is it because it bloats the app with functionality that some users will never use? I feel like that is fairly usual for productivity/business apps generally.
- simonw 15d ago
  I don't see anything wrong with it, I just think it's interesting.
  - 2sk21 15d ago
    You aren't worried about the provenance of the installed apps?
    - simonw 15d ago
      How do you mean? I trust OpenAI to have installed apps that at least work well enough for their intended purposes.
      - 2sk21 15d ago
        You aren't worried that these binaries may have unfixed vulnerabilities?
        simonw 14d ago
        That's the nature of installing software. I'd like to know OpenAI's approach to updating these things - their auto-updated is pretty aggressive already, but does that cover their vendored cached apps too?
  - winstonp 15d ago
    I think it's overbloating my computer
  - nialse 15d ago
    It does, however, introduce a potentially enormous attack surface into ChatGPT, along with creative opportunities for less security conscious individuals and LLMs.
lgl 15d ago
Does that really mean that it's bundling those apps from the start or did it just download and install them at some point to do some local work on some prompt or job you ask it to? I don't see it making much sense to bundle it. I'm sure a LOT of LLM prompts are related with docs, excels, powerpoints etc, etc but don't really see it worth it for it to be bundled on the codex app from the get go, because otherwise, why not also install dozens of other apps?
- RomanHauksson 15d ago
  > why not also install dozens of other apps? because other apps are less likely to be useful, and there's diminishing returns
- simonw 15d ago
  I'm not sure. Someone who hasn't installed the ChatGPT (or Codex) apps yet could confirm this by installing the apps, seeing if that ~/.cache directory exists, then try running a prompt that needs Python or Node.js or LibreOffice and see if it downloads them when needed.
  - zatkin 15d ago
    I've never installed the ChatGPT app on my Mac until today. I ran the app, signed in, and I see the same. % ls ~/.cache/codex-runtimes/codex-primary-runtime/dependencies/native/libreoffice-headless libreoffice manifest.json
    - ValentineC 15d ago
      I have had the Codex/ChatGPT app installed for a few months, and can confirm that there's a 422.9 MB file named LibreOfficeDev.app in the above path. More notably, I don't use Computer Use or any of the fancy features, just Codex for agentic coding.
    - embedding-shape 15d ago
      On a Windows installation I see this: PS C:\Users\user> ls C:\Users\user\.cache\codex-runtimes\codex-primary-runtime\dependencies\native\ Mode LastWriteTime Length Name ---- ------------- ------ ---- d----- 8/27/2026 10:09 AM git d----- 6/16/2026 9:18 PM jxrlib d----- 8/26/2026 7:37 PM libheif d----- 6/17/2026 5:32 AM poppler d----- 8/27/2026 10:09 AM powershell So doesn't seem bundled with all installs at least.
quotemstr 15d ago
There's no security benefit to doing this versus demand-downloading hashed-locked components on need.
- TZubiri 15d ago
  Ok, it's probably not a security decision. It's a common pattern with both storage and memory management to push most reservations to initialization, in order to cluster resource insufficiency errors to a specific install-time when the user or admin can do something about it. An excessive just-in-time approach in both storage and memory would cause OOM and Disk exhaustion to occur at many different times.
trentor 15d ago
I don't see the problem?
- iAMkenough 15d ago
  Who said it was a problem? This looks like an observation to me, not an accusation.
jrflo 15d ago
I've noticed that when I have codex read/modify word files the live reasoning snippets often allude to LibreOffice, so that makes sense. I think it was a quick and dirty way for them to interface with docx and xlsx files?
esperent 15d ago
I actually bundle LibreOffice with my app too and the reason is reading files, especially old xls files. Since I'm bundling it I'm now using it for everything docs related but the specific reason is those old files. I couldn't find anything else that I could just drop it and feel confident it'll just read anything I give it.
- skinfaxi 15d ago
  [flagged]
  - Bridged7756 15d ago
    [flagged]
  - stackghost 15d ago
    >How much money have you contributed back to this seemingly indispensable project? Perhaps it's time for you to become familiar with the terms of the Mozilla Public License, under which Libre Office is released. There is no requirement for monetary compensation.
    - dnautics 15d ago
      No requirement doesn't mean "don't be a mensch"
      - rdbl27 15d ago
        You believe you know better than the authors themselves about how they ought to be treated? They chose -- explicitly, voluntarily, knowingly -- to give the thing away for free. That's their right for their own creation. Your preferences don't supersede theirs.
        sampullman 15d ago
        You've emphasized this point more than once, but I don't think it's a good counterargument to the GP. It is equally valid to say that they have explicitly (voluntarily, knowlingly) chosen to accept donations for their work. By profiting off their work and not supporting them you are making your own choice. It says nothing about the authors' preference.
vb-8448 15d ago
Curiously, I didn't find any reference in the Open source licences section of the codex app. Is this a MPL 2.0 violation?
- ars 15d ago
  I think that depends on if they distribute it with the install package, or if they download it once installed.
- thesdev 15d ago
  Copyright violation is the last thing one could accuse ChatGPT of.
  - throwaway613746 15d ago
    [dead]
  - vb-8448 15d ago
    Well, this one is particularly obvious, other one are more fuzzy.
- zamadatix 15d ago
  Despite the title, I'm not sure it's actually bundled. Some of the skills plugins will download it on the first run. So it depends where they are grabbing it from rather than the presence of the binary on the system, but I haven't checked that deep into where they actually grab it.
  - TZubiri 15d ago
    The license itself may be present in the cache folder. Alternatively, ChatGPT might happily disclose authorship and licensing if asked. I'm not convinced of the argument that the fact that it is not bundled at download or even at install-time, would free them of the GPL responsibilities. And at this point. I'm also not sure HOW the devs bundled libreoffice, whether they just mentioned in a prompt (use libreoffice), or whether they hardcoded a command (like apt install libreoffice), more likely the former, considering the recursive vibecoding nature of this software. Whole lotta words to say that I don't know whether this is a GPL violation, but interested in the answer. If it is a violation, the likely fix will probably be yet another prompt that says something like "comply with licensing", which probably already exists, so a more specific "provide attribution (in a way that doesn't bother the user)"
m3kw9 15d ago
probably uses it extensively to convert between LLM working on a doc and exporting it out to excel, word etc
dvduval 15d ago
My agent did it? I didn’t do it.
paaloeye 15d ago
First Claude installed 10GB VM [0] without asking, but OpenAI ships LibreOffice. What's next? Somebody ship their monorepo verbatim? Honestly, not sure it's worth having those app on your localhost at all. I ended up uninstalling all frontier labs bloated apps and start using Google AI Mode + Antigravity CLI / Claude Code sometimes. [0] https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues/22543 https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues/22543
- newbie001 14d ago
  I already have a copy of LibreOffice on my mac. It weights around 3GB. That extra copy is not appreciated
zitterbewegung 15d ago
It might be for their new Work product which can produce docx, pdf and pox files.
petilon 15d ago
There is a serious threat to Microsoft here, if everyone starts using AI for generating and updating Office docs. At some point Office will become just a viewer.
- jags-v 15d ago
  Haven't used MicrosoftOffice in the past 7 years.
- trueno 15d ago
  im stoked for that outcome, standard document tooling should not live behind subscription models anymore. i dont care that microsoft spent zillions bankrolling education systems and companies to fall into this cultural lock in over the decades whether they like it or not spreadsheets word docs etc are just ubiquitous parts of existing in society at this point you're gonna need to reach for these tools eventually just to apply for jobs or do homework
  - tcfhgj 6d ago
    Need is a bit strong, you can absolutely apply and do homework without, e.g. using Typst or Latex or whatever else is out there
  - watwut 15d ago
    You assume tokens will be free after these get their monopoly positions? Actual libre office is actual open source running on weak hardware. Truly free. And I suspect we will look back at MS with nostalgia once Altman and Musk get their ai imperiums.
- dist-epoch 15d ago
  Don't worry, they are ahead of this. Satya said some time ago that they expect soon to have more agents using Microsoft software than humans, and are working on transitioning their focus from serving humans to serving agents. https://www.news18.com/business/satya-nadella-announces-microsofts-move-to-ai-agent-pricing-model-ws-l-9722868.html https://www.news18.com/business/satya-nadella-announces-micr...

494 points by timpera 15d ago

The new app is an unbelievable mess. Settings are senselessly organized, too. The whole thing has this aesthetic slickness and then underneath it's like the people who make it have never even used it. It's not surprising that it's pulled in absolutely massive dependencies, although I'm not sure it's the wrong call on some operating systems. LibreOffice is pretty tried and true.

jbird99 15d ago
Almost like it's... vibe coded.
- senectus1 15d ago
  yeah, that seems obvious by now.
- deleted 15d ago
  [deleted]
yeutterg 15d ago
Personally, I like the 3-pane organization (sidebar, chat, browser). I turned ChatGPT into my bookkeeper and social post writing/kanban space, and it works well for these script+browser workflows on desktop. However, all of this is confusing: - the ChatGPT/Codex split on desktop - Chat/Work split on mobile - how you remotely access each chat from your phone (some of my most valuable chats are buried in Remote) - which chats propagate from device to device, and which remain on that device
- nobody_r_knows 15d ago
  [dead]
- pests 15d ago
  > - the ChatGPT/Codex split on desktop Do tell, cause I run the "ChatGPT" program on Windows to use both the normal Chat and Codex (side menu items). I think its a more recent change.
  - yeutterg 14d ago
    This is from a recent update, and I'm on macOS. I had to re-download it, not just update from within the app. This new version has tabs for ChatGPT and Codex. The ChatGPT tab seems way less powerful; Codex is basically a coding agent with a UI and browser built in. Pretty sure this is the old Codex app with the ChatGPT tab bolted on. It's great in some ways, but needs work in others.
written-beyond 15d ago
HOW DOES IT WORK FOR YOU PEOPLE?! Istg on windows, I can't get codex app, new chatgpt or chatgpt classic to work without hanging on even a moderately sized chat. I tried all of the different tricks people recommended but that shit just crawls. It was stable at some point, classic that is, but then it started being a laggy mess. I've uninstalled new chatgpt/codex app. I can't access phone chats on it, I can't use the desktop allocated chat messages on it. I have to use up codex limits. I am so surprised that OpenAI ships that hot garbage on windows.
- johaugum 15d ago
  Mac Neo can be had for $600 now, and it runs Codex incredibly well! But even on the Windows machine, if you Tailscale into a free tier VM for the workloads, you'd probably have a much better time. Just leave Codex itself on your machine, if you set up computer use it will happily set up all of this for you while you have lunch.
  - timpera 14d ago
    Do you have any tips for running Codex on the Macbook Neo? Have you changed any setting? On mine, it stutters on every single chat, and I don't even have any plugins installed.
    - johaugum 14d ago
      Are you on the recent update that handles long chat sessions much better? That made a big difference. Biasing towards lightweight and fast tool alternatives (uv over pip, bun over npm, ripgrep over grep, etc). If that still doesn't resolve it, a free tier VM might be the move. I suspect OpenAI will be bundling some kind of VM with their new Astra release, which Sama said yesterday will be released soon (this week maybe?). If this new model supports much longer running tasks, you'll want a dedicated box that can run 24/7 even when your Neo is closed and asleep anyway.
  - NBJack 14d ago
    > Mac Neo can be had for $600 now Maybe a used one? https://www.apple.com/macbook-neo/ https://www.apple.com/macbook-neo/ has it for ~$700
Razengan 15d ago
And when you go to their forums it says "This forum is not for discussing the ChatGPT App..." ..like excuse me? Where the fuck else would we post feedback about it?
- Maken 15d ago
  Just tell ChatGPT what changes you want in the next version.
RestartKernel 15d ago
They removed the global shortcut to show a portable chat overlay. That one entrypoint must've been the source of at least 80% of my chats, yet apparently it was considered too vestigial to keep.
- mkesper 15d ago
  Can it be reassigned under Settings / Keyboard shortcuts?
  - isityettime 15d ago
    Yes, although it's buried among a huge number of other shortcuts now, and not particularly easy to search for.
    - RestartKernel 14d ago
      Did they restore the functionality itself? Last time I checked the overlay was just straight up not a feature anymore.
enraged_camel 15d ago
The thing that blows my mind about it is that they straight up copied Claude Code and tried to frame it as some sort of incredible accomplishment. There are no new ideas, no insightful UI/UX paradigms, no killer features. They say money can't buy taste. The ChatGPT/Codex app is proof that it cannot buy creativity either.
- steve1977 15d ago
  Codex, clone Claude Code, make no mistakes they also didn't make.
- pdantix 15d ago
  which is really funny/sad when you see openai staff doing victory laps whenever claude code copies one or two small codex features like /goal.
KronisLV 15d ago
> The new app is an unbelievable mess. How so? On Windows, I like it (version 26.825.51511). Works fast (like modern Claude Code desktop, their old versions were bad), has pretty okay UI (could have an option for wider main text display, like ZCode added), allows you to change the fonts and shells and some of the layout stuff. I mean currently I have Paseo hooked up to OpenCode that runs the actual models and often that works a bit better for me, but as a standalone desktop offering, the ChatGPT app has been okay in my experience. I can kinda see why ZCode copied them a bunch (though ZCode also lets you run 3rd party models, which is actually preferable to me). I do like the idea that Claude Code desktop had in the earlier versions, 3 tabs - chat, work, code, except they kinda went in the direction of merging chat and work which was very ehhhh. The ChatGPT app doesn't even have a proper split between chat and work/code.
Schlagbohrer 15d ago
Probably vibe coded right?
prmph 14d ago
Where are the AI-will-render-software-engineers-obsolete and/or vibe-coding apologists? They can make all kinds of nice-sounding arguments, but if AI is contributing to a degradation in product quality, their arguments cannot stand up to the reality we see with our own eyes. The proof of the pudding is in the eating, and all that. It is the same with Claude Code. Pretty much each change Anthropic makes to it now lowers its quality. Just yesterday they auto-updated it, and now backspace in the CLI does not work reliably. It also insert the enter key command when there is a line break in text that you are pasting, causing fragments of the prompt to be sent prematurely. What the heck! And pretty much all the regressions I have experienced this year have also not been fixed.

lennart-rth 15d ago

I suspect that it’s used in headless clip mode to reliably convert file formats back and forth.

topaztee 15d ago

spinning up an entire copy of libreoffice sounds super heavy?, if someone here is actually using chatgpt to edit docx documents then they can feel free to use us. vespper.com

woadwarrior01 15d ago
You want something heavier? They were trashing people's SSDs a few months ago. IDK if it's been resolved, yet. https://x.com/bdsqlsz/status/2067964486615810369 https://x.com/bdsqlsz/status/2067964486615810369
- joquarky 15d ago
  DNS_PROBE_FINISHED_NXDOMAIN

wilg 15d ago

Presumably this is for ChatGPT Work? https://simonwillison.net/2026/Aug/30/understanding-chatgpt-work/ https://simonwillison.net/2026/Aug/30/understanding-chatgpt-...

soupspaces 15d ago

[dead]

monneyboi 15d ago

Imagine the enormous complexity of office file formats if your business is literally building coding models/agents and still you choose to bundle LibreOffice.

gfalcao 15d ago

Are they at least respecting the licenses (.i.e.: providing a verbatim copy of each license?)

Lucasoato 15d ago

Also in the newest app I think the transcription feature is unusable. Ok, I can have a shortcut to start and stop recording. Wow, cool! Ok, but where did the transcription go? In my clipboard? To my cursor? Hey? :(

FailMore 15d ago

(I made a similar comment in a different post by Simon Willison yesterday about GPT Work) I am unsure the direction that AI assisted document creation work will go in. I am opinionated and building something in the space. In this reply I discuss my view + what I have been building. My opinion is: We now have AI, this new amazing flexible tool. We can throw it at any problem. But in terms of document creation we have a choice between old fashioned siloed document formats (.pptx, .pdf, .xlsx, .docx, etc.) and a freshly rendered - slightly randomly styled - html site with some basic javascript within it. I think these combinations are odd and do not maximise the powers of AI. I've been building something called SmallDocs [0][1] which is a new take on work documents. It's all Markdown, but it always renders (100% privately) on the SmallDocs site. This means the SmallDocs renderer can convert recognised Markdown combinations into powerful traditional document formats [2]. For example, we convert a ```cells block into an in-line spreadsheet you can export to Excel. This gives an agent the ability to express itself with a great deal of depth and flexibility. For example, your agent can produce a single data analysis "SmallDoc" with text, charts, spreadsheets, etc. [3] I find that combining formats quickens the speed I can understand a topic. SmallDocs also have standardised and pretty boring styling. This means you spend less time understanding the layout of a flashy HTML page and more time on the content. I also believe a pre-determined rendering engine has a lot of advantages over a freslhy built HTML artifact. It allows you to build in lot's of useful defaults that the agent doesn't have to code from scratch. These can be small things, for example, every time your agent renders a Markdown table in SmallDocs you can instantly copy it as a CSV or a PNG. And these can be bigger things, such as a rich slides DSL with solid styling defaults, which saves your agents a lot of tokens and results in consistently attractive HTML slides [4]. (Slides can also be automatically exported to .pdf and .pptx.) I've been at it for a few months, and am still working on the project. I am looking for feedback and open source collaborators. Thanks for reading! [0] https://smalldocs.org https://smalldocs.org [1] https://github.com/espressoplease/smalldocs https://github.com/espressoplease/smalldocs [2] https://smalldocs.org/blogs/what-is-a-smalldoc https://smalldocs.org/blogs/what-is-a-smalldoc [3] https://smalldocs.org/s/46fWiAyF77T9c7tqYwAQqp#k=j78ZEOOrgo8fFAuHnxYiJi9MycoAhg7yFV2XqqweEgE https://smalldocs.org/s/46fWiAyF77T9c7tqYwAQqp#k=j78ZEOOrgo8... [4] https://smalldocs.org/s/QrmeWMsULGS871nXQYOacB#k=ubOHH9QtTWpJunRK86Z_dapXV4_WilXam6Z7Yx3xbQw https://smalldocs.org/s/QrmeWMsULGS871nXQYOacB#k=ubOHH9QtTWp... (And something totally different, your agent can also use SmallDocs to walk you through code files: https://smalldocs.org/s/JsI_-tWSH0UpSd_YXxVLPm#k=G5jLCYA4JUXo9wGsBCIy3CqVC2HUpkzhWo0tEgBwg0M https://smalldocs.org/s/JsI_-tWSH0UpSd_YXxVLPm#k=G5jLCYA4JUX...)

devy 15d ago

Now someone please use ChatGPT/Codex or Claude Code to rewrite the entire LibreOffice source into a single Rust binary already! Just like Jarred Sumner did for Bun [1] or Carmine Paolino did for Fastpotify [2] - granted there are some rough edges for sure, but the slim diet trimmed down and performance gains were wrothy. [1] https://bun.com/blog/bun-in-rust https://bun.com/blog/bun-in-rust [2] https://fastpotify.rocks/ https://fastpotify.rocks/

what 15d ago
> rewrite the entire LibreOffice source into a single Rust binary already! Why?
- dustypotato 13d ago
  Java

robomartin 15d ago

Last time I used the Windows version it pegged all my cores at 100% usage for some reason. The machine became unusable. Instead I used Codex with JetBrains Rider (doing a C# project) and it worked flawlessly.

basil_io 15d ago

[dead]

throwaway613746 15d ago

[dead]

chemael 15d ago

[flagged]

xvilka 15d ago

Would be nice if they donate to LibreOffice then, to improve the support of various MS Office features in files, as well as comparison/diffing features. Win-win to everyone.

j16sdiz 15d ago
As much as I would hope they would... I don't think that's in character for sam altman.
- mastermage 15d ago
  Sam "Its only Open until it does not benefit me anymore" Altman
pocksuppet 15d ago
[flagged]
- dumberquestions 15d ago
  Good thing that "would be nice" doesn't entail that they have to.
  - YetAnotherNick 15d ago
    What does donation does for open source? Surely it wont come close to pay talented developers who create it. For cloud cost, there are few companies already giving generous free tier for open source. The only thing that donation could pay for is marketing e.g. events and meetups.
    - mksaunders2 15d ago
      That's not true at all. Donations are the biggest source of income for The Document Foundation, the non-profit behind LibreOffice, and have been used to pay developers who've joined the team in recent years: * Michael Weghorn (accessibility) * Jonathan Clark (language and scripting support) * Neil Roberts (scripting improvements) * Dan Williams (macOS support and general UI improvements)

luciana1u 15d ago

[flagged]

nicman23 15d ago

having had to manually save some xls files by editing their xml, yeah it makes sense

hexley19 15d ago

Bundling LibreOffice with a chatbot app feels like peak software bloat. My hard drive just let out an audible sigh.

kwhitlock 15d ago

Reminds me of pulling in an entire JS framework just for a single button. The bundle size must be something else.

4thguy 14d ago
Reminds me of this joke https://medium.com/s/silicon-satire/i-peeked-into-my-node-modules-directory-and-you-wont-believe-what-happened-next-b89f63d21558 https://medium.com/s/silicon-satire/i-peeked-into-my-node-mo...

runtime_lens 15d ago

[dead]

onion2k 15d ago

I wonder if this says anything about the capabilities of AI. If it's better to bundle an entire headless office suite than ask your AI to build support for relatively well documented formats (or even to extract the file support parts it needs from Libra Office), that seems to suggest AI isn't as good as human devs just yet.

aeon_ai 15d ago
Or, it's dumb as hell to have an AI re-write Word every time it wants to output or present a document. But let's focus on how this validates the belief that "AI bad."
- psjs 15d ago
  perhaps onion2k meant that openAI could’ve reimplemented it once in-house on their side for the codex app?
artyomsv 15d ago
[dead]

deleted 14d ago

[deleted]

pseudosavant 15d ago

Is that what it is using to render and manipulate MS Office documents? That'd explain the poor rendering of some of my files. Bundling all of LibreOffice seems like a pretty huge dependency.

bs7280 15d ago
What's ironic about this is, afaik there's no programmatic way to get a screenshot of a PowerPoint on windows other than opening up PowerPoint and screenshotting it. I only discovered this when I first tried out Anthropics official PowerPoint skill when it came out this winter. If anything happens from this, I hope it forces Microsoft to address some of its long standing hostile to power users issues so they can stay relevant in the world of AI tooling.
- pseudosavant 15d ago
  This can absolutely be done programmatically. I just added the ability to do that using PowerPoint for Windows yesterday in my uv/python tool `markdown-pptx`. Codex added the functionality in less than 5 minutes. https://github.com/pseudosavant/markdown-pptx/ https://github.com/pseudosavant/markdown-pptx/
  - bs7280 14d ago
    Thanks for sharing, now im wondering if they did in fact grant my wish since I messed with this in January. Im lucky my job does not require me to make any pptx presentations.
  - pseudosavant 14d ago
    For those that are interested, this inspired me to create a tool just for exporting images and PDFs of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files. Check out the repo below, or if you have uv installed just run `uvx office-export skill install` or `uvx office-export --help` to check it out. It uses Office for Windows, so it is Windows only. I don't currently have access to a Mac machine, so I can't build in Mac support yet. https://github.com/pseudosavant/office-export https://github.com/pseudosavant/office-export

cpursley 15d ago

I still don’t understand why with all their cash these companies dont redo their apps in Rust or native. They are all so heavy and dog slow. There are already some very fast cross platform (wasm too!) libraries that can do what poppler does as well as parse and produce various office file formats. Because 2gb is crazy town, these things could be around 100mb, just throw some tokens at the problem.

johnsmith1840 15d ago
You should go actually try to make any basic automation work around these systems. They purposely obscured, google doc is another example they completly hide the dom! I spent months fighting word processing systems and ended up shipping libre. There's almost zero alternatives without that becoming your entire company.
sudo_cowsay 15d ago
Not that easy. Also, they have "priorities." Although their priorities are different than the users'.
- cpursley 15d ago
  Just throw some tokens at the problem. I’ve vibed up a Rust Crux hybrid app that runs well on macOS, iPad and wasm and does some pretty complex xml manipulation and other document work. Absolutely smokes electron and you get native UI. Ref: https://redbadger.github.io/crux/ https://redbadger.github.io/crux/
  - verdverm 15d ago
    one does not just "throw tokens" at a problem, Ai is not that capable, and we are talking about MS Office file format, likely a NP hard problem
    - cpursley 15d ago
      AI is especially good at ports like this where there’s a known and well tested surface area.

simonw 15d ago

(This is more of a tweet than a blog post, it really wasn't written with Hacker News in mind.)

benatkin 15d ago
Indeed, but that likely wouldn't have stopped someone from submitting it with a misleading title. HN is known to get a lot of misleading titles submitted and to have to change them. The <title> tag is better, it doesn't say "a full copy". In the screenshot it shows "headless" in the filename. I would simply add the tiny detail of headless to the <title> and use this title for HN: Codex Bundles Headless LibreOffice
MattDamonSpace 15d ago
frankly how dare you
- mrob 15d ago
  How is simonw to blame for somebody else submitting it to HN?
  - embedding-shape 15d ago
    True, I feel like the entire HN community is to blame for this, particularly pg and dang.
    - TZubiri 15d ago
      Thanks Obama
  - justsomehnguy 15d ago
    I have a feeling you should learn about Poe's law: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe's_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe's_law
    - 15d ago

dvrp 15d ago

And wait till you find out about @oai/walnut

bcanzanella 15d ago
do tell!
- djriley 15d ago
  Walnut is the .NET and OpenXML backend. I think the point parent was trying to make it that it shouldn't be surprising Codex bundles runtimes for damn near everything.

mirzap 15d ago

I wonder why they didn't try to discover if the user already has those binaries and use them before downloading.

duskdozer 15d ago
Why would they? Storage [they don't have to pay for] is cheap! And just bundling it saves them time.
LtWorf 15d ago
Because they vibe coded it.
NostraDavid 14d ago
Preventing potential version/feature issues?

alex-moon 15d ago

Someone may need to explain to me what is wrong with this sorry. Is it because it bloats the app with functionality that some users will never use? I feel like that is fairly usual for productivity/business apps generally.

simonw 15d ago
I don't see anything wrong with it, I just think it's interesting.
- 2sk21 15d ago
  You aren't worried about the provenance of the installed apps?
  - simonw 15d ago
    How do you mean? I trust OpenAI to have installed apps that at least work well enough for their intended purposes.
    - 2sk21 15d ago
      You aren't worried that these binaries may have unfixed vulnerabilities?
      - simonw 14d ago
        That's the nature of installing software. I'd like to know OpenAI's approach to updating these things - their auto-updated is pretty aggressive already, but does that cover their vendored cached apps too?
- winstonp 15d ago
  I think it's overbloating my computer
- nialse 15d ago
  It does, however, introduce a potentially enormous attack surface into ChatGPT, along with creative opportunities for less security conscious individuals and LLMs.

lgl 15d ago

Does that really mean that it's bundling those apps from the start or did it just download and install them at some point to do some local work on some prompt or job you ask it to? I don't see it making much sense to bundle it. I'm sure a LOT of LLM prompts are related with docs, excels, powerpoints etc, etc but don't really see it worth it for it to be bundled on the codex app from the get go, because otherwise, why not also install dozens of other apps?

RomanHauksson 15d ago
> why not also install dozens of other apps? because other apps are less likely to be useful, and there's diminishing returns
simonw 15d ago
I'm not sure. Someone who hasn't installed the ChatGPT (or Codex) apps yet could confirm this by installing the apps, seeing if that ~/.cache directory exists, then try running a prompt that needs Python or Node.js or LibreOffice and see if it downloads them when needed.
- zatkin 15d ago
  I've never installed the ChatGPT app on my Mac until today. I ran the app, signed in, and I see the same. % ls ~/.cache/codex-runtimes/codex-primary-runtime/dependencies/native/libreoffice-headless libreoffice manifest.json
  - ValentineC 15d ago
    I have had the Codex/ChatGPT app installed for a few months, and can confirm that there's a 422.9 MB file named LibreOfficeDev.app in the above path. More notably, I don't use Computer Use or any of the fancy features, just Codex for agentic coding.
  - embedding-shape 15d ago
    On a Windows installation I see this: PS C:\Users\user> ls C:\Users\user\.cache\codex-runtimes\codex-primary-runtime\dependencies\native\ Mode LastWriteTime Length Name ---- ------------- ------ ---- d----- 8/27/2026 10:09 AM git d----- 6/16/2026 9:18 PM jxrlib d----- 8/26/2026 7:37 PM libheif d----- 6/17/2026 5:32 AM poppler d----- 8/27/2026 10:09 AM powershell So doesn't seem bundled with all installs at least.

quotemstr 15d ago

There's no security benefit to doing this versus demand-downloading hashed-locked components on need.

TZubiri 15d ago
Ok, it's probably not a security decision. It's a common pattern with both storage and memory management to push most reservations to initialization, in order to cluster resource insufficiency errors to a specific install-time when the user or admin can do something about it. An excessive just-in-time approach in both storage and memory would cause OOM and Disk exhaustion to occur at many different times.

trentor 15d ago

I don't see the problem?

iAMkenough 15d ago
Who said it was a problem? This looks like an observation to me, not an accusation.

jrflo 15d ago

I've noticed that when I have codex read/modify word files the live reasoning snippets often allude to LibreOffice, so that makes sense. I think it was a quick and dirty way for them to interface with docx and xlsx files?

esperent 15d ago

I actually bundle LibreOffice with my app too and the reason is reading files, especially old xls files. Since I'm bundling it I'm now using it for everything docs related but the specific reason is those old files. I couldn't find anything else that I could just drop it and feel confident it'll just read anything I give it.

skinfaxi 15d ago
[flagged]
- Bridged7756 15d ago
  [flagged]
- stackghost 15d ago
  >How much money have you contributed back to this seemingly indispensable project? Perhaps it's time for you to become familiar with the terms of the Mozilla Public License, under which Libre Office is released. There is no requirement for monetary compensation.
  - dnautics 15d ago
    No requirement doesn't mean "don't be a mensch"
    - rdbl27 15d ago
      You believe you know better than the authors themselves about how they ought to be treated? They chose -- explicitly, voluntarily, knowingly -- to give the thing away for free. That's their right for their own creation. Your preferences don't supersede theirs.
      - sampullman 15d ago
        You've emphasized this point more than once, but I don't think it's a good counterargument to the GP. It is equally valid to say that they have explicitly (voluntarily, knowlingly) chosen to accept donations for their work. By profiting off their work and not supporting them you are making your own choice. It says nothing about the authors' preference.

vb-8448 15d ago

Curiously, I didn't find any reference in the Open source licences section of the codex app. Is this a MPL 2.0 violation?

ars 15d ago
I think that depends on if they distribute it with the install package, or if they download it once installed.
thesdev 15d ago
Copyright violation is the last thing one could accuse ChatGPT of.
- throwaway613746 15d ago
  [dead]
- vb-8448 15d ago
  Well, this one is particularly obvious, other one are more fuzzy.
zamadatix 15d ago
Despite the title, I'm not sure it's actually bundled. Some of the skills plugins will download it on the first run. So it depends where they are grabbing it from rather than the presence of the binary on the system, but I haven't checked that deep into where they actually grab it.
- TZubiri 15d ago
  The license itself may be present in the cache folder. Alternatively, ChatGPT might happily disclose authorship and licensing if asked. I'm not convinced of the argument that the fact that it is not bundled at download or even at install-time, would free them of the GPL responsibilities. And at this point. I'm also not sure HOW the devs bundled libreoffice, whether they just mentioned in a prompt (use libreoffice), or whether they hardcoded a command (like apt install libreoffice), more likely the former, considering the recursive vibecoding nature of this software. Whole lotta words to say that I don't know whether this is a GPL violation, but interested in the answer. If it is a violation, the likely fix will probably be yet another prompt that says something like "comply with licensing", which probably already exists, so a more specific "provide attribution (in a way that doesn't bother the user)"

m3kw9 15d ago

probably uses it extensively to convert between LLM working on a doc and exporting it out to excel, word etc

dvduval 15d ago

My agent did it? I didn’t do it.

paaloeye 15d ago

First Claude installed 10GB VM [0] without asking, but OpenAI ships LibreOffice. What's next? Somebody ship their monorepo verbatim? Honestly, not sure it's worth having those app on your localhost at all. I ended up uninstalling all frontier labs bloated apps and start using Google AI Mode + Antigravity CLI / Claude Code sometimes. [0] https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues/22543 https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues/22543

newbie001 14d ago
I already have a copy of LibreOffice on my mac. It weights around 3GB. That extra copy is not appreciated

zitterbewegung 15d ago

It might be for their new Work product which can produce docx, pdf and pox files.

petilon 15d ago

There is a serious threat to Microsoft here, if everyone starts using AI for generating and updating Office docs. At some point Office will become just a viewer.

jags-v 15d ago
Haven't used MicrosoftOffice in the past 7 years.
trueno 15d ago
im stoked for that outcome, standard document tooling should not live behind subscription models anymore. i dont care that microsoft spent zillions bankrolling education systems and companies to fall into this cultural lock in over the decades whether they like it or not spreadsheets word docs etc are just ubiquitous parts of existing in society at this point you're gonna need to reach for these tools eventually just to apply for jobs or do homework
- tcfhgj 6d ago
  Need is a bit strong, you can absolutely apply and do homework without, e.g. using Typst or Latex or whatever else is out there
- watwut 15d ago
  You assume tokens will be free after these get their monopoly positions? Actual libre office is actual open source running on weak hardware. Truly free. And I suspect we will look back at MS with nostalgia once Altman and Musk get their ai imperiums.
dist-epoch 15d ago
Don't worry, they are ahead of this. Satya said some time ago that they expect soon to have more agents using Microsoft software than humans, and are working on transitioning their focus from serving humans to serving agents. https://www.news18.com/business/satya-nadella-announces-microsofts-move-to-ai-agent-pricing-model-ws-l-9722868.html https://www.news18.com/business/satya-nadella-announces-micr...