It’s been part of the strategy from both OpenAI and Anthropic to split users into “devs” and “knowledge workers”. Hence Codex and Work (or Claude Code vs Cowork), and Chat is stuck in between. Codex can do everything Work can do and most non devs I know use Codex - from sales ppl doing weekly prioritisation of pipelines and customised email reach outs, to project managers using it as a living LLMWiki of all the projects and teams. In fact the biggest shift in business I’ve seen is the embrace of coding agents as defacto AI tool across knowledge workers.
What's the point of this split?
I suspect it's mostly marketing. People think "I don't want code so I won't use Codex" so they get the same thing but labeled Work.
+1 I’ve had this conversation with so many non-techies. They assume Codex can only do coding.