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- Tutorial: Codex for Beginners
Tutorial: Codex for Beginners
Plus: How to Edit any image with Grok Precise Mode
Poonam Soni
August 11, 2026
In partnership with
Welcome to AI Toast!
Here’s what’s on the menu today:
Learn Codex from OpenAI
Meta's Muse Glimmer is here
Super Tools for Productivity
Tutorial: How to edit any image with Grok Precise Mode
Quick Toasts: OpenAI's ChatGPT for academic research program hits huge demand
Total read time: About 5 minutes, perfect for a quick coffee break
Image Source: OpenAI
OpenAI has introduced a new beginner-friendly course focused on Codex, helping users understand how to get started with AI-powered coding workflows.
Designed for people who are new to Codex and AI-assisted coding.
The course focuses on understanding how Codex can support coding and development tasks.
The course is led by Aaron Wilkowitz, a Solutions Engineer at OpenAI.
Aimed at helping learners understand how AI and data science can be applied to real-world workflows.
Personal Take: A beginner-focused Codex course is a great move as AI coding tools become more mainstream. You don't need to be an expert developer to start learning how to work alongside AI.
100+ Claude Code hacks to ship code 10X faster
Top engineers at Anthropic and OpenAI say AI now writes 100% of their code.
If you're not using AI, you're spending 40 hours doing what they do in 4.
These 100+ Claude Code hacks fix that and help you ship 10x faster.
Sign up for The Code and get:
100+ Claude Code hacks used by top engineers — free
The Code newsletter — learn the latest AI tools, tips, and skills to code faster with AI in 5 minutes a day
Image Source: Meta
Meta has introduced Muse Glimmer, an open-weight 30B-parameter AI model designed to run locally on consumer hardware like Macs and PCs with a capable GPU.
Runs Locally: Works directly on your device without requiring constant internet access or cloud infrastructure.
Built for Agents: Can plan tasks, use tools, write code, recover from errors, and handle multi-step workflows.
Open Source Weights: Released under the Apache 2.0 license, giving developers broad freedom to use and customize the model.
Under 20GB: Quantization compresses the model to under 20GB, making it practical for consumer hardware.
Faster Responses: Meta's speculative decoding system can significantly speed up generation for smoother real-time interactions.
Multimodal: Can understand both text and images, including screenshots, charts, and documents.
Personal Take: The interesting part isn't just the model's size, it's that capable AI agents can now run directly on personal computers. That could make local, private, always-on AI much more practical.
Superhero Tools (Jobs)
NotebookLM: An AI research assistant that lets you work with your own documents, websites, videos, and other sources to generate summaries, insights, mind maps, and audio overviews.
n8n: An AI workflow automation platform that connects your apps and services to automate repetitive tasks, build AI workflows, and create custom business automations.
Fireflies.ai: An AI meeting assistant that records, transcribes, summarizes meetings, and helps turn conversations into searchable notes and action items.
Gamma: An AI-powered workspace for creating presentations, documents, websites, and visual content from simple prompts.
Claude: An AI assistant for writing, research, coding, analysis, file creation, and everyday productivity, with tools for working directly with documents and data.
Tutorial: How to edit any image with Grok Precise Mode
Grok’s Precise Mode lets you make targeted changes to an image while keeping the rest of the image intact.
How to use it
Open Grok and generate an image or upload the image you want to edit.
Select Precise Mode for more targeted image editing.
Use the selection tool to highlight the specific area you want to change.
Describe the change you want, for example:
“Change the background.”
“Replace the shirt with a jacket.”
“Change the object to a flower.”
Let Grok process the edit and review the updated image.
Pro Tip 💡
Use Precise Mode when you only want to change one part of an image without affecting everything else.
Quick AI News Bites
OpenAI expands its AI cybersecurity program Daybreak with a new cyber-trained model designed to help defenders identify vulnerabilities and respond to increasingly AI-driven attacks.
Anthropic says an unreleased Claude model made a major mathematical advance on the Riemann hypothesis, improving the known lower bound for zeros satisfying the hypothesis from 41.6% to 67.2%.
NVIDIA is partnering with major financial institutions to fund the AI infrastructure boom. The chipmaker is working with firms including Apollo, Blackstone and Goldman Sachs to mobilize capital for new AI data centers.
Discovered Materials raises $9 million for AI-driven materials discovery. The startup is building AI agents designed to discover new semiconductor materials and accelerate their path toward real-world use.
OpenAI's ChatGPT for academic research program hits huge demand. After receiving more than 13,000 first-wave applications representing up to 65,000 researcher seats, OpenAI has moved new applicants to a waitlist while it selects the initial 10,000-seat cohort.
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Cheers,
— Poonam Soni