I think it's the opposite. Especially considering Codex started out as a web app that offers very little interactivity: you are supposed to drop a request and let it run automatously in a containerized environment; you can then follow up on it via chat --- no interactive code editing.
Fair I agree that was true of early codex and my perception too.. but today there are two announcements that came out and thats what im referring to.
specifically, the GPT-5.3 post explicitly leans into "interactive collaborator" langauge and steering mid execution
OpenAI post: "Much like a colleague, you can steer and interact with GPT-5.3-Codex while it’s working, without losing context."
OpenAI post: "Instead of waiting for a final output, you can interact in real time—ask questions, discuss approaches, and steer toward the solution"
Claude post: "Claude Opus 4.6 is designed for longer-running, agentic work — planning complex tasks more carefully and executing them with less back-and-forth from the user."
Frankly it seems to be that codex is playing catch-up with claude code and claude code is just continuing to move further ahead. The thing with claude code is it will work longer... if you want it to. It's always had good oversight and (at least for me) it builds trust slowly until you are wishing it would do more at once. When I've used codex (it has been getting better) but back in the day it would just do things and say it's done and you're just sitting there wondering "wtf are you doing?". Claude code is more the opposite where you can watch as closely as you want and often you get to a point where you have enough trust and experience with it that you know what it's going to do and don't want to bother.