This adds initial support for MCP servers in the style of Claude Desktop
and Cursor. Note this PR is the bare minimum to get things working end
to end: all configured MCP servers are launched every time Codex is run,
there is no recovery for MCP servers that crash, etc.
(Also, I took some shortcuts to change some fields of `Session` to be
`pub(crate)`, which also means there are circular deps between
`codex.rs` and `mcp_tool_call.rs`, but I will clean that up in a
subsequent PR.)
`codex-rs/README.md` is updated as part of this PR to explain how to use
this feature. There is a bit of plumbing to route the new settings from
`Config` to the business logic in `codex.rs`. The most significant
chunks for new code are in `mcp_connection_manager.rs` (which defines
the `McpConnectionManager` struct) and `mcp_tool_call.rs`, which is
responsible for tool calls.
This PR also introduces new `McpToolCallBegin` and `McpToolCallEnd`
event types to the protocol, but does not add any handlers for them.
(See https://github.com/openai/codex/pull/836 for initial usage.)
To test, I added the following to my `~/.codex/config.toml`:
```toml
# Local build of https://github.com/hideya/mcp-server-weather-js
[mcp_servers.weather]
command = "/Users/mbolin/code/mcp-server-weather-js/dist/index.js"
args = []
```
And then I ran the following:
```
codex-rs$ cargo run --bin codex exec 'what is the weather in san francisco'
[2025-05-06T22:40:05] Task started: 1
[2025-05-06T22:40:18] Agent message: Here’s the latest National Weather Service forecast for San Francisco (downtown, near 37.77° N, 122.42° W):
This Afternoon (Tue):
• Sunny, high near 69 °F
• West-southwest wind around 12 mph
Tonight:
• Partly cloudy, low around 52 °F
• SW wind 7–10 mph
...
```
Note that Codex itself is not able to make network calls, so it would
not normally be able to get live weather information like this. However,
the weather MCP is [currently] not run under the Codex sandbox, so it is
able to hit `api.weather.gov` and fetch current weather information.
---
[//]: # (BEGIN SAPLING FOOTER)
Stack created with [Sapling](https://sapling-scm.com). Best reviewed
with [ReviewStack](https://reviewstack.dev/openai/codex/pull/829).
* #836
* __->__ #829
https://github.com/openai/codex/pull/793 had important information on
the `notify` config option that seemed worth memorializing, so this PR
updates the documentation about all of the configurable options in
`~/.codex/config.toml`.
@oai-ragona and I discussed it, and we feel the REPL crate has served
its purpose, so we're going to delete the code and future archaeologists
can find it in Git history.
Originally, the `interactive` crate was going to be a placeholder for
building out a UX that was comparable to that of the existing TypeScript
CLI. Though after researching how Ratatui works, that seems difficult to
do because it is designed around the idea that it will redraw the full
screen buffer each time (and so any scrolling should be "internal" to
your Ratatui app) whereas the TypeScript CLI expects to render the full
history of the conversation every time(*) (which is why you can use your
terminal scrollbar to scroll it).
While it is possible to use Ratatui in a way that acts more like what
the TypeScript CLI is doing, it is awkward and seemingly results in
tedious code, so I think we should abandon that approach. As such, this
PR deletes the `interactive/` folder and the code that depended on it.
Further, since we added support for mousewheel scrolling in the TUI in
https://github.com/openai/codex/pull/641, it certainly feels much better
and the need for scroll support via the terminal scrollbar is greatly
diminished. This is now a more appropriate default UX for the
"multitool" CLI.
(*) Incidentally, I haven't verified this, but I think this results in
O(N^2) work in rendering, which seems potentially problematic for long
conversations.
As stated in `codex-rs/README.md`:
Today, Codex CLI is written in TypeScript and requires Node.js 22+ to
run it. For a number of users, this runtime requirement inhibits
adoption: they would be better served by a standalone executable. As
maintainers, we want Codex to run efficiently in a wide range of
environments with minimal overhead. We also want to take advantage of
operating system-specific APIs to provide better sandboxing, where
possible.
To that end, we are moving forward with a Rust implementation of Codex
CLI contained in this folder, which has the following benefits:
- The CLI compiles to small, standalone, platform-specific binaries.
- Can make direct, native calls to
[seccomp](https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man2/seccomp.2.html) and
[landlock](https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man7/landlock.7.html) in
order to support sandboxing on Linux.
- No runtime garbage collection, resulting in lower memory consumption
and better, more predictable performance.
Currently, the Rust implementation is materially behind the TypeScript
implementation in functionality, so continue to use the TypeScript
implmentation for the time being. We will publish native executables via
GitHub Releases as soon as we feel the Rust version is usable.
Michael Bolin ·