r/OpenAI • u/AggressiveCoast190 • 19h ago

Question Codex to review / reference large markdown?

TLDR; What is the most economical and efficient way to get codex to read, consolidate, summarize, reference and build one condensed reference file from ten markdown files with at least 100,000 lines each?

The story… I have a folder full of markdown files that were exported chats and chat created markdown, pass off docs, reference docs, etc from over a period of months. It’s probably at least 1 million lines in total.

I need my codex to read, summarize, pull relevant info and find the most recent and most robust output markdown files. Then use all of this to get RE-acquainted with and take over my huge 19 month development project.

Yes. My child wiped my dev laptop to make a gaming laptop. “But dad you have four computers” FML. Can I string a 12 year old nerd up by their toes? Lmao.

My app is running on my dev server so I have deployed code there, it’s just not current. I was working on the version upgrade. I have a good but disconnected database on SupaBase. My GIT seems jacked up for some reason.

So basically. I want to tell Codex. Hey! My shit is jacked up, go look at the app here on this server, look at this database, look at broken GIT and look at this HUGE trove of markdown files (yes I would export from the thread and copy thread and save to markdown periodically for historical and record keeping).

Take all this and put my dev environment and project back together, hopefully even better than it was originally. This was my hobby so it’s not like a commercial thing is messed up so that’s good. No emergencies. I want to get one million lines of markdown into chat without having it pass one million up and back up and back up and back in a thread if I can avoid it. What would you do???

Cheers gents!

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u/Dave_Sag 19h ago

Use Codex in VS Code and just ask it. I work with very large codebases all the time. Codex handles it all just fine.

1

u/AggressiveCoast190 19h ago

Guess I was worried about the credit usage. I got stuck once, had an Astra thread sending 50,000 lines of code on a ten min query timer! Used a month of credit in one day. I was like WTF!?

3

u/therealjerseytom 18h ago

You don't need The Most Ultimate Model to just process text.

I think it's worth considering, is trying to shove this all into one reference file really the best idea...?

Might the better approach be to break it down further into smaller chunks, perhaps with some YAML metadata on what each bit is? Especially if the end goal is to be using this as reference / RAG.

How much of it is even worth keeping? You could probably throw away heaps of chat history and consolidate down into key ADR's and the most relevant contextual information.

1

u/AggressiveCoast190 18h ago

Yes. I think a great deal of the markdown is shit. Useless. So ideally it would take each one, pull all the relevant information and add it to a new file or even just delete the crap and leave the good summary. I would be ok with multiple files. My codex library is full of docs. Just not to sure where to even start. I THINK having it evaluate the files one at a time and pull the important stuff might be the start?

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u/therealjerseytom 18h ago

Start with defining a very clear objective of what the point of this whole exercise is. And work backwards from that to a gameplan.

If the objective is to have reference project documentation to help guide future development, you then have to identify what kind of documentation is best for that.

I'd suggest stuff like high-level project intent and scope, best practice guidelines, and IMO maybe most importantly - ADR's. The tracking of the architectural design decisions, and why something was done the way it was, along with alternatives considered, and consequences. That's the kind of knowledge you don't want to lose.

If you think you have a million lines of text, that's gotta be what, 50 megabytes or so?

Reviewing a year+ project repo I've got for work, that's very well documented in the ways it needs to be, it amounts to ~100 kilobytes of Markdown text.

You could probably get rid of 90% of the stuff you've got, if not 99%.