This is PR 3 of the app-server tracing rollout.
PRs https://github.com/openai/codex/pull/13285 and
https://github.com/openai/codex/pull/13368 gave us inbound request spans
in app-server and propagated trace context through Submission. This
change finishes the next piece in core: when a request actually starts a
turn, we now create a core-owned long-lived span that stays open for the
real lifetime of the turn.
What changed:
- `Session::spawn_task` can now optionally create a long-lived turn span
and run the spawned task inside it
- `turn/start` uses that path, so normal turn execution stays under a
single core-owned span after the async handoff
- `review/start` uses the same pattern
- added a unit test that verifies the spawned turn task inherits the
submission dispatch trace ancestry
**Why**
The app-server request span is intentionally short-lived. Once work
crosses into core, we still want one span that covers the actual
execution window until completion or interruption. This keeps that
ownership where it belongs: in the layer that owns the runtime
lifecycle.
### Summary
Propagate trace context originating at app-server RPC method handlers ->
codex core submission loop (so this includes spans such as `run_turn`!).
This implements PR 2 of the app-server tracing rollout.
This also removes the old lower-level env-based reparenting in core so
explicit request/submission ancestry wins instead of being overridden by
ambient `TRACEPARENT` state.
### What changed
- Added `trace: Option<W3cTraceContext>` to codex_protocol::Submission
- Taught `Codex::submit()` / `submit_with_id()` to automatically capture
the current span context when constructing or forwarding a submission
- Wrapped the core submission loop in a submission_dispatch span
parented from Submission.trace
- Warn on invalid submission trace carriers and ignore them cleanly
- Removed the old env-based downstream reparenting path in core task
execution
- Stopped OTEL provider init from implicitly attaching env trace context
process-wide
- Updated mcp-server Submission call sites for the new field
Added focused unit tests for:
- capturing trace context into Submission
- preferring `Submission.trace` when building the core dispatch span
### Why
PR 1 gave us consistent inbound request spans in app-server, but that
only covered the transport boundary. For long-running work like turns
and reviews, the important missing piece was preserving ancestry after
the request handler returns and core continues work on a different async
path.
This change makes that handoff explicit and keeps the parentage rules
simple:
- app-server request span sets the current context
- `Submission.trace` snapshots that context
- core restores it once, at the submission boundary
- deeper core spans inherit naturally
That also lets us stop relying on env-based reparenting for this path,
which was too ambient and could override explicit ancestry.
- add a local Fast mode setting in codex-core (similar to how model id
is currently stored on disk locally)
- send `service_tier=priority` on requests when Fast is enabled
- add `/fast` in the TUI and persist it locally
- feature flag
Send a request with `generate: falls` but a full set of tools and
instructions to pre-warm inference.
---------
Co-authored-by: Codex <noreply@openai.com>
Summary
- add a `prefer_websockets` field to `ModelInfo`, defaulting to `false`
in all fixtures and constructors
- wire the new flag into websocket selection so models that opt in
always use websocket transport even when the feature gate is off
Testing
- Not run (not requested)
Instead of storing a special connection on the client level make the
regular task responsible for establishing a normal client session and
open a connection on it.
Then when the turn is started we pass in a pre-established session.
In this PR, I am exploring migrating task kind to an invocation of
Codex. The main reason would be getting rid off multiple
`ConversationHistory` state and streamlining our context/history
management.
This approach depends on opening a channel between the sub-codex and
codex. This channel is responsible for forwarding `interactive`
(`approvals`) and `non-interactive` events. The `task` is responsible
for handling those events.
This opens the door for implementing `codex as a tool`, replacing
`compact` and `review`, and potentially subagents.
One consideration is this code is very similar to `app-server` specially
in the approval part. If in the future we wanted an interactive
`sub-codex` we should consider using `codex-mcp`
Today `sub_id` is an ID of a single incoming Codex Op submition. We then
associate all events triggered by this operation using the same
`sub_id`.
At the same time we are also creating a TurnContext per submission and
we'd like to start associating some events (item added/item completed)
with an entire turn instead of just the operation that started it.
Using turn context when sending events give us flexibility to change
notification scheme.
Adds a new ItemStarted event and delivers UserMessage as the first item
type (more to come).
Renames `InputItem` to `UserInput` considering we're using the `Item`
suffix for actual items.
Extracting tasks in a module and start abstraction behind a Trait (more
to come on this but each task will be tackled in a dedicated PR)
The goal was to drop the ActiveTask and to have a (potentially) set of
tasks during each turn