The ChatGPT/Codex app bundles a full copy of LibreOffice (simonwillison.net)

314 pointsby timpera9 hours ago146 comments

xvilka 3 hours 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.

pocksuppet an hour ago

They don't have to. If LibreOffice wanted them to have to, they should have used a different license.

dumberquestions an hour ago

Good thing that "would be nice" doesn't entail that they have to.

mplewis an hour ago

you people are always mixing up the legal thing to do with the right thing to do

fangspire an hour ago

But laws are just encodes morality.

Dylan16807 42 minutes ago

Many of them are, but they're focused on big picture issues and preventing harm. Most of morality has no legal force.

ultrarunner 32 minutes ago

Funny how morality so often benefits incumbents and the powerful.

marcus_holmes 30 minutes ago

Absolutely not.

It was illegal to harbour escaped slaves. Or hide Jews from the Gestapo.

Laws have nothing to do with morality. Or justice.

rdbl27 an hour ago

Surely "the right thing to do" includes some element of the authors' explicitly stated preferences about how they wish to be treated.

In this case, they chose -- explicitly -- to NOT require any payment or contribution from anyone.

Your feelings about what constitutes "the right thing to do" are apparently different from those of the authors. You believe you know better than they themselves do how they should be treated.

Dylan16807 an hour ago

> Surely "the right thing to do" includes some element of the authors' explicitly stated preferences about how they wish to be treated.

It does! And they wish to get donations. There's a button right at the top on the site making that clear.

> In this case, they chose -- explicitly -- to NOT require any payment or contribution from anyone.

Yes, so what? It is true that they wished to not require payment. That is one of their wishes, but they have more than one wish. And if they required payment, that wouldn't be a donation anyway.

mastazi 42 minutes ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.

marcus_holmes 32 minutes ago

They clearly would like donations, but choose not to require any payments.

Your line of reasoning seems to be along the lines of "anything not forbidden is compulsory" which is not a good place. Having the choice to donate but not being required to is good.

And yes, I think that if OpenAI is choosing to include an entire copy of LibreOffice in their product, it is definitely the right thing to do to sling them a donation. Note that the moral thing to do is not always the required thing to do, or even the legal thing to do.

satvikpendem 26 minutes ago

More like, don't expect anything if not forced. Most people only generally pay for things if there is no other option. It's about what's moral (even then debatable as everyone has different morals) versus what's realistic to expect.

marcus_holmes 15 minutes ago

The Guardian's funding model [0] proves this wrong.

People will absolutely pay for things voluntarily if you ask them, without forcing them to.

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/membership/2018/nov/12/katharine...

In a nutshell - voluntary funding by readership. No paywall. You can read as many stories as you like for free, and donate if you want. It works.

satvikpendem an hour ago

Who decides what the right thing to do is? Everyone has different opinions.

j16sdiz 11 minutes ago

As much as I would hope they would... I don't think that's in character for sam altman.

esperent 8 hours 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.

lgl 9 hours 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?

simonw 8 hours 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 8 hours 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

embedding-shape 8 hours 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.

dofm 6 hours ago

Is this perhaps because the aim is to read Office documents and there are (maybe, I don't know for sure) default components within Windows that can do that?

melagonster 4 hours ago

Codex always try Libreoffice first on my computer.

zamadatix 8 hours ago

Notably: this did not exist after I installed the app, it existed after I ran the app and there was the long startup screen. Presumably, and I'm not sure I'm interested enough to redo it all and find out, that long startup screen involves the default skills plugins setting up their environment and one of those pulls it as a general app requirement.

I also saw this present after first run on macOS but not Windows.

ValentineC 7 hours 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.

RomanHauksson 8 hours ago

> why not also install dozens of other apps?

because other apps are less likely to be useful, and there's diminishing returns

isityettime 7 hours 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.

yeutterg 7 hours 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

jbird99 7 hours ago

Almost like it's... vibe coded.

senectus1 4 hours ago

yeah, that seems obvious by now.

written-beyond 6 hours 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 6 hours 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.

Razengan 5 hours 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?

RestartKernel 4 hours 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.

enraged_camel 3 hours 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 31 minutes ago

Codex, clone Claude Code, make no mistakes they also didn't make.

pseudosavant 9 hours 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.

nomel 9 hours ago

> Bundling all of LibreOffice seems like a pretty huge dependency

What's the alternative library you see?

verdverm 9 hours ago

Why not computer use or using the tools the user prefers instead? The primary office suites have APIs/CLIs now

tyre 8 hours ago

Computer use is slow and can take control of the application focus. I’ll be doing things while Claude runs in the background. Suddenly it decides to open the app and try to do something + screenshot it.

verdverm 8 hours ago

That's where the CLIs come in for me, I'm not going to waste tokens on screenshots and input device manipulation

https://devblogs.microsoft.com/microsoft365dev/getting-start...

https://github.com/googleworkspace/cli

ChickeNES 8 hours ago

I don't know how many times I've had to yell at codex or claude to use/implement headless versions of whatever it's doing at the time, interrupts me trying to multitask and play Battlefield or Factorio while they work :P

verdverm 6 hours ago

don't try Dyson sphere project (/s, its acrually really great), but maybe try x4 foundations, I'm contemplating how I might have my agent help manage my empire

johnsmith1840 5 hours ago

If you've ever actually gone down this route you will try exactly this realize how much of a cluster f these products are and just use libre.

I did the exact same thing in my AI system. Spent an ENOURMOUS amount of time trying everything I could and in the end libre was the only thing even somewhat functional.

Easily 2 months of my life lost to these god forsaken systems. APIs and CLIs sound reasonable until you actually attempt anything in this space.

Computer use is exactly the same thing. Go try this: go to a google doc and dev tools check out the dom and now do the same for a word doc. Eye gouging pain of trying to get anything to work.

simongg 9 hours ago

Apache POI

nomel 6 hours ago

I don't think that's anywhere near equivalent. That's for reading and writing Microsoft Office docs. It has no office functionality. LibreOffice has a full API, for example to run calculations on spreadsheets [1].

The goal of bringing in dependencies is so you don't have to duplicate the functionality, in this case, crafted over decades of effort.

[1] https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Documentation/SDKGuide/C...

MikeTheGreat 8 hours ago

pandoc

JLO64 9 hours ago

For a docker image of mine I was bundling the full version of LibreOffice as well but I managed to get some space savings by bundling just the no-gui version.

zamadatix 8 hours ago

Seems to match the screenshot in the blogpost but libreoffice-headless still shows as 429.7 MB.

OutOfHere 8 hours ago

Just the headless version looks to be bundled. The title as posted might be incorrect.

tiahura 8 hours ago

Yes. If you have word you can instruct to use word via com or AppleScript.

telotortium 8 hours ago

I have a skill that instructs ChatGPT/Codex to verify the rendering using the Mac versions of Microsoft Office. Even without registering, you still can open files read-only, which is enough. Apparently Office refuses to open some Open Office XML documents that LibreOffice is fine with, so that's another reason to use this. After a few times, Codex ended up storing some memories to stop producing broken files in the first place.

I generated the skill originally for ChatGPT 5.5, so some of these may not strictly be necessary anymore with later models. But posting here in case others find it useful: https://gist.github.com/telotortium/844386f762c4b3bab49999ba...

bs7280 7 hours 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 5 hours 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/

petilon 8 hours 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.

trueno 7 hours 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

watwut 7 hours 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 7 hours 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-micr...

petilon 7 hours ago

So they will switch to per-agent pricing instead of per-user. Fine, but that doesn't change the fact that Microsoft Office will become a just bunch of viewers as far as human usage is concerned. As far as generating Office documents, you can do that without using any Microsoft code.

cromka 7 hours ago

... and without the license, crucially!

yakz 7 hours ago

This is one that's already true and "everyone" hasn't figured it out yet. But you don't really even need Office as a viewer, PDF is fine (for printable/portable fixed-layout) or just HTML. "Office" is a product that doesn't need to exist anymore, at least for the core apps. For day-to-day office work, you probably shouldn't be using those legacy apps, you should be reviewing portable document formats and asking an agent to make the revisions that you want.

dist-epoch 6 hours ago

> For Microsoft, this shift means products like M365 will act as the foundational layer where AI agents operate. Users will still need places to store documents, manage projects, search files, and track workflows

They bet on the online office suite (M365).

kelvinjps10 7 hours ago

But why would openai and antrhopic pay them if they already libreoffice for free and why would users pay if they already have an Ai subscription

fg137 6 hours ago

I have not created or read any Word document for a very long time. I only create PowerPoint presentations a few times a year for work, which could be easily replaced with PowerPoint online or Google Slides or even just some markdown files.

But I have a license for the entire office 365 including Copilot premium.

Guess why?

articulatepang 5 hours ago

For Excel?

jags-v 4 hours ago

Haven't used MicrosoftOffice in the past 7 years.

devy 5 hours 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 [2] https://fastpotify.rocks/

what 2 hours ago

> rewrite the entire LibreOffice source into a single Rust binary already!

Why?

vb-8448 8 hours 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?

thesdev 8 hours ago

vb-8448 8 hours ago

Well, this one is particularly obvious, other one are more fuzzy.

zamadatix 8 hours 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 8 hours 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)"

zamadatix 6 hours ago

I finally did find the license in

  ~/.cache/codex-runtimes/codex-primary-runtime/dependencies/native/libreoffice-headless/libreoffice/LibreOfficeDev.app/Contents/Resources/LICENSE

prmoustache an hour ago

> Whole lotta words to say that I don't know whether this is a GPL violation,

I don't need a lot of words to say it can't be a GPL violation since Libreoffice is distributed under the MPL v2.0 license.

https://www.libreoffice.org/licenses/

https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/MPL/license-policy/

ars 6 hours ago

I think that depends on if they distribute it with the install package, or if they download it once installed.

monneyboi 7 hours 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.

paaloeye 8 hours 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

lennart-rth 7 hours ago

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

alex-moon 9 hours 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 8 hours ago

I don't see anything wrong with it, I just think it's interesting.

winstonp 8 hours ago

I think it's overbloating my computer

nialse 8 hours ago

It does, however, introduce a potentially enormous attack surface into ChatGPT, along with creative opportunities for less security conscious individuals and LLMs.

alex-moon 8 hours ago

Oh right, yeah I agree. It's the kind of thing I can imagine the harness downloading in the background anyway (or instructing the user to do) at some point so I can see the sense in just skipping that bit. Kind of comforting they just do it the same way the rest of us do - if it ain't broke and so on.

OutOfHere 8 hours ago

Actually, people do use and require the functionality, which is the point. The title as posted might be incorrect.

alex-moon 8 hours ago

Yes, that's what I mean - maybe that didn't come across cos I said "bloats". I work for a business that builds web apps for corporates - LibreOffice is bundled in most of the repos of ours that I've seen, a bit like Imagick is in the broader sector.

mirzap 8 hours ago

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

LtWorf 7 hours ago

Because they vibe coded it.

Lucasoato 7 hours 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? :(

jrflo 8 hours 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?

gfalcao 7 hours ago

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

zitterbewegung 8 hours ago

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

topaztee 7 hours 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 7 hours 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

joquarky 5 hours ago

DNS_PROBE_FINISHED_NXDOMAIN

simonw 9 hours ago

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

MattDamonSpace 9 hours ago

frankly how dare you

mrob 8 hours ago

How is simonw to blame for somebody else submitting it to HN?

embedding-shape 8 hours ago

True, I feel like the entire HN community is to blame for this, particularly pg and dang.

TZubiri 8 hours ago

Thanks Obama

justsomehnguy 8 hours ago

I have a feeling you should learn about Poe's law: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe's_law

switchbak 7 hours ago

Anyone quoting Poe's Law is clearly just a Nazi.

...

For those that can't see the sarcasm: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law

benatkin 6 hours 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

dvduval 8 hours ago

My agent did it? I didn’t do it.

trentor 9 hours ago

I don't see the problem?

iAMkenough 8 hours ago

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

robomartin 5 hours 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.

FailMore 7 hours 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

[1] https://github.com/espressoplease/smalldocs

[2] https://smalldocs.org/blogs/what-is-a-smalldoc

[3] https://smalldocs.org/s/46fWiAyF77T9c7tqYwAQqp#k=j78ZEOOrgo8...

[4] 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=G5jLCYA4JUX...)

wilg 7 hours ago

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

quotemstr 9 hours ago

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

TZubiri 8 hours 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.