Register a Business on Google with Codex Computer Use

What you’ll build

You’ll hand Codex a real browser task it can’t do through an API — registering a business on Google Business Profile — and let its computer-use agent click through the whole form while you work on something else. By the end you’ll have a live profile with categories, services, hours, website and logo filled in, sitting at pending verification.

What you’ll need

• A ChatGPT Plus account ($20/mo is enough — that’s what this runs on)
• The Codex desktop app (computer use is macOS only right now)
• Claude Code, or any coding agent, to write the handoff brief
• A Google account for the business
• Chrome, signed into that Google account

Step 1: Decide whether this is even a computer-use job

The rule: if there’s an API, don’t use computer use. It’s slower and more expensive than a real integration.

Google Business Profile registration has no API for creating a listing. That’s exactly what computer use is for — high-value, locked behind a login, no programmatic path. Same logic applies to directory submissions, ad-account verification, cancellation flows, and portal-based research.

Step 2: Install Codex and turn on computer use

Grab the Codex app from ChatGPT. There’s a cloud option, but computer use needs the desktop app.

Then open Settings → Computer Use and enable it. macOS will ask for permissions:

Screen & System Audio Recording  →  allow
Let ChatGPT control apps on your computer  →  allow

If you run multiple ChatGPT accounts, enable it on the account you’re actually working in. Toggling it on a different domain won’t carry over.

Step 3: Write the handoff brief FIRST

This is the step that decides whether the run works. Codex knows how to click. It does not know your business.

Before touching Codex, have Claude Code build a one-page markdown brief from wherever your real business context lives — a Notion task, a project doc, your site copy:

Create a one-page markdown file for Codex so it can complete the
"Register [Business] on Google Business Profile" task. Go into the
project notes, read the context and to-do items, and make the document
thorough enough for Codex to do the entire process by itself — it has
access to computer use.

You want exact field values in there: legal name, primary category, service areas, hours, description, services list, website. Plus a “done means” definition so the agent reports back cleanly instead of trailing off.

Put every field it will be asked for in the brief. Anything you leave out becomes an interruption mid-run — in this build a missing phone number stopped the agent cold and had to be typed in by hand.

Step 4: Hand the brief to Codex

Drag the markdown file into the Codex composer and prompt it plainly:

Can you work on this Google registration? Let me know if you need
access to certain plugins. I'm expecting you to use computer use to
navigate through my browser and complete this.

It opens its own tab and starts working. Your cursor stays yours — it runs beside you, not over you.

Step 5: Set the approval mode before it gets annoying

Codex gives you two modes:

• Ask for approval — confirms nearly every action
• Ask for me — only flags actions detected as potentially unsafe

Default is the first one, and you’ll be clicking Continue constantly. Switch to the second. There is no bypass-permissions equivalent yet, so expect confirmations regardless on anything sensitive — account creation counts as sensitive.

Step 6: Fix the Chrome extension permission

If the agent stalls trying to reach a local file, the extension is missing a permission. Right-click the ChatGPT Chrome extension:

Manage extensions  →  Details  →  Allow access to file URLs

Worth setting before you start rather than debugging it mid-run.

Step 7: Register as a service-area business

When the form asks for an address, choose service-area business and enter the regions you serve rather than a street address. Your address stays hidden on the public listing.

If you’re filming or screen-sharing this, the address still appears on screen while you type it. Blur it.

Step 8: Watch your usage, not just the task

Raising effort to high and speed to fast burns the rate limit fast. In this run it dropped to 20% remaining in a five-hour window, with a four-hour reset — enough to nearly kill the task before it finished.

Leave effort at the default unless the task genuinely needs it. And use the async nature: the agent works in its own tab, so run a second agent on something else while this one clicks.

Step 9: Finish the part it can’t

Codex completed the profile — name, category, service areas, hours, website, description, logo. It stopped at verification, because Google requires business video verification, and that’s a human step.

Expect a partial finish on tasks like this. The agent gets you to the last mile; you close it out.

Resources

[REVIEW: video not published at time of writing — paste the live URL below before publishing this lesson]

• Free Claude Code skills: https://github.com/austinpeechatt/creator-skills
• Wispr Flow — voice-to-text, what the prompts in this build were dictated with (1 free month): https://wisprflow.ai/r?AUSTIN16480