OpenAI Codex engineer: "I've had Codex running for 26 days searching for Atlantis" as 'vibe archaeology' spreads

A developer who works on Codex at OpenAI said he has had a Codex agent running for 26 days to find the lost city of Atlantis.

X user pash (@pashmerepat), whose bio reads "codex @openai," wrote on Nov. 11: "I've had codex running for 26 days searching for atlantis. Best bet right now is faroe plateau but needs more time." The post drew about 1,600 likes, and Polymarket's write-up calling "vibe archaeology" a new use for AI agents drew about 4,400. In a reply he called it a "heinrich schliemann moment," after the man who dug up Troy.

The trigger was the previous day's viral story of a developer with no archaeology background who used 48 AI agents and NASA lidar to find an unmapped Maya settlement under the Mexican jungle. Others followed: one user said his agents swept 43 public lidar sheets in Spain for Iron Age hillforts; another posted three possible building sites under forest in Campeche, adding that they were unverified and may already be recorded.

The tone is half joking ("26 days of Codex looking for Atlantis. Meanwhile my bug from last Tuesday is still lost"). For the Maya find, Mexico's INAH has only said no site is registered at that spot; fieldwork has not happened. Atlantis has never been shown to exist.