Follow ZDNET: Add us as a favorite source On Google.
ZDNET Highlights
- The $20 ChatGPT Plus plan can handle real-world bug fixes.
- Codex helped identify both code bugs and hosting problems.
- AI saved time by fixing code and drafting support emails.
When you’re the only programmer, you both enjoy and dread the tech support ticket.
You cherish them because interacting with users often leads to a better understanding of what your code is doing out there. You fear them because sometimes those interactions result in fairly large homework assignments where you need to fix broken code.
initial problem
Last week I got one such ticket. A user wrote to tell me that he could not get my security tool to block access to his website. I maintain an open-source WordPress plugin designed to make websites private. The plugin is free, but my spending is mostly supported by a series of add-ons.
Also: I left Anthropic’s Cloud Cowork open in my files, and it was both fantastic and scary
I sometimes get complaints that the plugin won’t block access. The solution is almost always one of two steps: turn on Compatibility Mode, which changes the blocking behavior for certain topics, or turn off caching because cached websites ignore state changes.
I sent him a reply, but he told me none of the fixes were working. We went back and forth for a while, but none of my usual advice was working. Credit to user: She stuck with me and answered all my questions. Sometimes, users give up and you’re left wondering what could be going on there. But a hard-working user who is willing to partner in finding a solution is worth its weight in gold.
We don’t need to go into too much detail about the problem as this is mostly a ChatGPT story. But eventually I identified that the setting that turned on blocking would not stick, this situation only happened for some websites that had a certain configuration related to the robots.txt file. This was related to a feature I added in October, but it was a behavior I had not seen before in my test environment.
Also: I tried to vibe code an app as a beginner – this is what Cursor and Replit taught me
That said, at least one other user had experienced this issue since I found a one-star review from someone who complained about this exact symptom on the WordPress plugin repository. That user was not helpful, never contacted me. He happily handed a one-star “this sucks” review on the main site where I promote my plugin and walked away. I’m sure this discouraged many other downloads, but at least I had confirmation that the bug I found was a thing.
(Disclosure: ZDNET’s parent company Ziff Davis filed a lawsuit against OpenAI in April 2025, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in the training and operation of its AI systems.)
Chatgpt to the rescue
In September, when I initially added the feature that would cause this user difficulty, I was using the $200-per-month ChatGPT Pro plan. This is because I ran out of stamina in about five hours and I didn’t want to wait several days to continue. In October, once I completed the programming project, I reverted to the more reasonable $20-per-month ChatGPT Plus plan. This is what I signed up for now.
Also: I completed 4 years of product development in 4 days for $200, and I’m still shocked
I’m glad to find that the $20 per month plan is enough for the occasional bug fix and feature addition run. This entire process was done using the ChatGPT Plus plan.
I have my ChatGPT integration in my VS Code development environment, so to get back into the code to diagnose this bug, I simply opened up VS Code and started typing in the Codex pane. I chose GPT-5.2-Codex, the latest and greatest coding model from OpenAI, and went to work.
My first attempt was to simply share the user’s complaint with ChatGPT and ask the AI to scan the code to see if it could find any errors. This did not work because the user’s initial complaint did not contain enough information to diagnose the problem. The user said that he had no knowledge of web administration, so I asked for permission to visit his site myself.
Also: I Tested Free vs. Paid AI Coding Tools – Here’s Which One I’d Actually Use
Poking around for a few minutes I discovered that when one of my newest features, the AI Scraping Defense capability, was enabled on his site, no other changes in the same tab group would stick. You can click a checkbox and press save, but it never gets saved. I had not noticed the problem before, but it became clear that the problem was related to its server configuration.
Once I identified the problem, I asked ChatGPT to fix it. What I found particularly interesting was that before Codex made the change, it reminded me that there was a settings export feature in my code and asked me to get those settings from the user’s system. Wanted to double check what the settings data looks like before making any changes.
That wasn’t some mindless AI request. This was a fairly sophisticated request from “someone” completely versed in the overall architecture of my security product. This was not something a newbie, first-year programmer would ask for, but something a more experienced developer could check before making changes.
Also: 10 ChatGPT codec secrets I learned after just 60 hours of pair programming with it
I went ahead and created the settings JSON file and fed it to Codex. Once he looked into that, he looked at my code and identified a usage pattern that could actually lead to bad behavior. Fixing that bug required some engineering, and when I mixed spinach with hummus and lemon chili seasoning for dinner that night, ChatGPT rewrote my code and fixed the bug.
I recreated the user’s configuration locally and tested both pre-bug and post-bug fixes. The modified code solved the problem, so I sent it back to the user.
but this should have worked
At this point, you can expect me to tell you that the user was satisfied and once again all was good in Webland. But no one. Although the setting has now stuck, leaving security turned on, the user’s site still appears unsafe.
I still had access to the user’s site, so I went back and found that some pages were secure, but others were not. All caching plugins on the site were turned off, so it was not site-specific caching that was the problem.
Also: The Best Free AI Courses and Certifications for Upskilling in 2026 – and I’ve Tried Them All
I updated the codex with all this information, and the AI made a number of suggestions, ranging from ridiculous (delete the entire server and restart) to incredibly useful. I’ve long since learned that coding AI loves to throw out strange suggestions, which I assume is to make sure we humans are paying attention. Once we eliminate those options, AI becomes more grounded.
It also made a bunch of logging and tracking suggestions that would have worked if I were a server administrator with shell access to that machine. But since the user was very unfamiliar with server technology, and his hosting provider did not expose the shell for user access, those options were not possible.
Also: How to Use ChatGPT: A Beginner’s Guide to the Most Popular AI Chatbot
To his credit, once I explained to ChatGPT that these approaches would not be feasible, he came up with a new strategy. It asked me to add a parameter to pages that don’t hide, something like ?mps_hide=1.
It states that this will force the cache to feed a new page instead of the cached page. If the URL with the test parameter was blocked, but the URL without the test parameter was unblocked, this would confirm that there was, in fact, caching somewhere between the server and the browser.
It happened, and there it was. Some system-level caching beyond the control of my code was feeding older versions of pages that were supposed to be behind my security plugin. Because the pages were never being fed by my plugin, I didn’t have a chance to block them.
The only solution was to disable caching at the hosting level. It was out of my control, out of the AI’s control, and even out of the user’s control. The issue had to be escalated to the hosting provider’s technical support team.
signed sealed Delivered
This is where this story moves away from coding, even though I did all of this inside my VS Code development environment.
Here was my next challenge. I had to try to explain to a very non-technical user how to explain a very technical requirement to the technical support team of a historically unresponsive and fairly uncooperative hosting provider. I have history with this hosting provider. It once tried to fire me from ZDNET because I didn’t want to give it a five-star review, past two editors-in-chief. so. History.
I had to text my user a technical support request that she could pass on to the very friendly people at the hosting provider. I didn’t want any of my remaining anger to appear anywhere in this text. I didn’t want to waste nearly an hour carefully writing a technical document for their work.
Also: 10 ChatGPT codec secrets I learned after just 60 hours of pair programming with it
So, inside my development environment, I told Codex that a non-technical user needs to submit a technical support request to the hosting provider. The report needed to provide sufficient detail to complete the task.
Codex not only wrote it for me, but also included a “proof of diagnosis”, effectively telling the hosting provider’s tech support team how it proved the problem was with host-level caching and couldn’t be fixed on our end.
I sent a text to the user. He sent it to the hosting provider. A day later, he reported that everything was working again.
plus plan
ChatGPT’s $20-per-month Plus plan is great for occasional bug fixes and the work described in this article. Although you won’t be able to make it an entirely new product for yourself, it is a very welcome addition to the VS Code workflow. This is especially the case if you already have ChatGPT Plus for some other purpose.
The new GPT-5.2-codec was particularly helpful and mostly on track. While my interaction with the user lasted for several days, the actual time I spent working on the code and solution was completed in less than an hour because of Codex’s help. Oh, and the customer gave me a highly praised five-star review.
Also: How ChatGPT Really Works (And Why It’s Been So Game-Changing)
Have you tried using an AI coding assistant like Codex to solve a real-world problem under time pressure? Did it really save you time, or did it add overhead and false leads? How comfortable are you with relying on AI for user-facing communications, such as writing a support email that needs to be both precise and diplomatic?
And when the root cause turns out to be something outside your code, like host-level caching, what’s your approach to proving the diagnosis and getting the hosting provider to act? Share your experiences and suggestions in the comments below.
You can follow my daily project updates on social media. Be sure to subscribe My weekly update newsletterAnd follow me on Twitter/X @davidgewirtzon facebook Facebook.com/DavidGewirtzon instagram Instagram.com/DavidGewirtzon bluesky @DavidGewirtz.comand on youtube YouTube.com/DavidGewirtzTV.
