Creating new simulations of black holes with Codex
“And that is just a computationally intractable problem.” CK uses Codex to find new numerical algorithms that can help him create faster, more stable simulations by implementing an agent skill he wrote. CK, a professor at the University of Arizona, has been studying black holes for over 20 years.
- Agent or tool
- ChatGPT
- Topic
- Software Development
- Reported on
- Case study (OpenAI)
- Added
- 2026-11-11
Why it matters
Coding agents are moving from autocomplete to doing whole tasks: reading a codebase, making a plan and changing many files. This case is a concrete example of where that works in practice. It is one of 221 sightings filed under Software Development on Agent Sightings (number 101 by interest), and one of 145 involving ChatGPT.
How you could try it
Here is a reusable prompt, written by us in our own words, that captures the task. Paste it into ChatGPT or any similar agent and adjust the details to your situation.
I want a coding agent to plan first, work on a branch, and show me the diff before anything is merged. The tool in the source case was ChatGPT.
Tip: Work on a fresh branch, ask for a plan before edits, and review the diff and test results before merging.
Source
Read the original first-hand account on Case study (OpenAI): https://openai.com/index/creating-new-simulations-black-holes. Our summary is a paraphrase; details are in the source.
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