## Why
Exec-server JSON-RPC calls can cross local and remote transports, but
trace context stopped at the RPC boundary. That made client and server
work difficult to correlate when diagnosing latency or failures.
## What changed
- Propagate the current W3C trace context on outbound JSON-RPC requests.
- Parent inbound request spans from received trace context.
- Record the received JSON-RPC method on server spans and keep each span
open through response enqueue.
- Add only the OTEL dependencies required by the exec-server crate.
## Stack
Review and land this stack in order:
1. #27466 — trace exec-server JSON-RPC requests **(this PR)**
2. #27467 — record bounded connection, request, and process lifecycle
metrics
3. #27470 — observe remote registration and Noise rendezvous lifecycle
## Validation
- `just test -p codex-exec-server --lib` (153 passed)
- `just bazel-lock-check`
- `just fix -p codex-exec-server`
## Why
The app-server and exec-server expose separate JSON-RPC APIs, but
exec-server currently sources its serialized protocol and envelope types
through app-server-oriented code. Giving each API an explicit owner
makes the crate boundary legible without introducing shared generic
envelopes.
## What changed
- Added `codex-exec-server-protocol` to own exec DTOs, process IDs, and
JSON-RPC envelopes.
- Updated exec-server clients, transports, handlers, and tests to use
the new crate.
- Exposed app-server's existing JSON-RPC types through a public `rpc`
module while retaining root re-exports.
- Preserved existing wire shapes, including exec `PathUri` behavior.
## Stack
This is PR 1 of 6. Next: [PR
#29721](https://github.com/openai/codex/pull/29721), which moves auth
mode below the app wire boundary.
## Validation
- Exec-server protocol and server coverage passed in the focused
protocol test runs.
- App-server protocol schema fixtures passed.
Supersedes #28288 (closed).
## Why
A short WebSocket interruption currently ends every client-side process
handle, even though exec-server keeps the server session and its
processes alive for a short time.
This is especially visible for executor-backed stdio MCP servers: a
temporary connection loss becomes a permanent `Transport closed` error.
The server already has the information needed to resume the session, but
the client opens a fresh session instead of using it.
This change reconnects below the process and MCP layers. Existing
process handles stay valid, missed output is recovered, and the same
server-side processes continue running.
## State machine
One logical `ExecServerClient` stays alive while its underlying RPC
connection changes generations.
```text
transport closes
+------------------------------------------------+
| v
+-------------+ +-------------+
| Connected | | Recovering |
+-------------+ +-------------+
^ |
| session resumed, processes caught up | retryable error
+------------------------------------------------+ loops until deadline
|
| deadline or permanent error
v
+-------------+
| Failed |
+-------------+
```
### `Connected`
- New RPC calls use the current connection.
- Process notifications are published in sequence order.
- A disconnect only starts recovery if it came from the current
connection generation. Late events from older generations cannot replace
the active connection.
### `Recovering`
- New calls wait instead of choosing a half-connected RPC client.
- Existing process handles, wake subscriptions, and event subscriptions
stay open.
- Streaming HTTP response bodies fail immediately because their byte
streams cannot be resumed safely.
- Recovery first waits for process starts that were already in flight. A
start whose result became ambiguous is cleaned up after reconnection
instead of being silently adopted.
- The client reconnects with the learned `session_id`. The server may
briefly report that the old connection is still attached, so that error
is retried until the detach finishes.
- The notification consumer starts before the resume handshake
completes. This prevents a busy process from filling the notification
queue and blocking the initialize response.
- Before installing the new connection, the client catches up every
recoverable process with `process/read`.
### `Failed`
- Recovery stops after 25 seconds or after a permanent error.
- Waiting calls are released with one stable disconnect error.
- Existing process sessions receive a terminal failure instead of
waiting forever.
## Recovering process events
Output, exit, and close events share one sequence. During normal
operation, the client buffers early events until every lower sequence
has been published.
After reconnection, the client reads each process starting after its
last published sequence:
1. Retained output chunks are inserted by sequence number.
2. Exit and close state are reconstructed in their sequence positions.
3. Events already received as live notifications are ignored as
duplicates.
4. Newly contiguous events are published in order.
5. If the server no longer retains enough output to fill a sequence gap,
only that process is terminated and failed. The recovered connection
remains usable for other processes.
The server reports its full next event sequence for unbounded reads,
including exit and close events. Closed processes remain readable for
the same 30-second window used to retain detached sessions.
## Other details
- Detached server sessions are retained for 30 seconds, leaving margin
around the client's 25-second recovery deadline.
- Session attach and detach update the active notification sender under
the same attachment lock, so an old connection cannot clear a newly
attached sender.
- A dedicated error code distinguishes the temporary "session is still
attached" race from permanent initialization errors.
- Process starts are identity-checked on both client and server. Cleanup
from an older start cannot remove a newer process that reused the same
ID.
- Mutating requests that were already in flight when the transport
closed are not replayed, because the client cannot know whether the
server applied them. Requests started after recovery is known wait for
the replacement connection.
- We assume the server/client version stays in sync (on the before/after
this PR)
## User impact
Long-running commands and stdio MCP servers can survive a temporary
exec-server WebSocket interruption without changing process IDs or
losing output produced during the outage.
## Summary
- replace the one-shot lazy remote exec-server cache with a
lock-protected current client
- when the cached websocket client is already disconnected, create one
fresh websocket client/session on the next `get()`
- keep existing disconnect failure behavior for old process sessions and
HTTP body streams; do not add session resume or request retry
## Why
The prior PR direction was trying to grow into session restore: resume
the old `session_id`, preserve existing process handles, and add
reconnect retry policy. That is more machinery than we want for this
slice.
For now, the useful minimum is simpler: later fresh remote operations
should not be stuck behind a dead cached websocket client, but anything
already attached to the dead connection should fail loudly through the
existing disconnect path. The server already has detached-session
cleanup via its existing TTL, so this PR does not need to add
client-side session preservation.
## What Changed
- `LazyRemoteExecServerClient::get()` now keeps the current concrete
client in a small mutex-protected cache plus one async connect lock.
- If that cached client is still connected, `get()` returns it.
- If that cached websocket client has observed the transport close,
`get()` creates a brand-new websocket client with a brand-new
exec-server session and replaces the cache.
- If that cached client is stdio-backed, behavior stays one-shot: the
dead client is returned and later work surfaces the existing disconnect
error.
- No `resume_session_id`, backoff, request replay, or existing
`RemoteExecProcess` rebinding is added here.
- Added focused websocket coverage that proves two concurrent `get()`
calls after disconnect share one fresh replacement client/session.
## Why
Configured environments need to connect to exec-server instances that
are not necessarily already listening on a websocket URL. A
command-backed stdio transport lets Codex start an exec-server process,
speak JSON-RPC over its stdio streams, and clean up that child process
with the client lifetime.
**Stack position:** this is PR 2 of 5. It builds on the server-side
stdio listener from PR 1 and provides the client transport used by later
environment/config PRs.
## What Changed
- Add `ExecServerTransport` variants for websocket URLs and stdio shell
commands.
- Add stdio command connection support for `ExecServerClient`.
- Move websocket/stdio transport setup into `client_transport.rs` so
`client.rs` stays focused on shared JSON-RPC client, session, HTTP, and
notification behavior.
- Tie stdio child process cleanup to the JSON-RPC connection lifetime
with a RAII lifetime guard.
- Keep existing websocket environment behavior by adapting URL-backed
remotes to `ExecServerTransport::WebSocketUrl`.
## Stack
- 1. https://github.com/openai/codex/pull/20663 - Add stdio exec-server
listener
- **2. This PR:** https://github.com/openai/codex/pull/20664 - Add stdio
exec-server client transport
- 3. https://github.com/openai/codex/pull/20665 - Make environment
providers own default selection
- 4. https://github.com/openai/codex/pull/20666 - Add CODEX_HOME
environments TOML provider
- 5. https://github.com/openai/codex/pull/20667 - Load configured
environments from CODEX_HOME
Split from original draft: https://github.com/openai/codex/pull/20508
## Validation
Not run locally; this was split out of the original draft stack and then
refactored to separate transport setup from the base client.
---------
Co-authored-by: Codex <noreply@openai.com>
### Why
Remote streamable HTTP MCP needs the executor to perform ordinary HTTP
requests on the executor side. This keeps network placement aligned with
`experimental_environment = "remote"` without adding MCP-specific
executor APIs.
### What
- Add an executor-side `http/request` runner backed by `reqwest`.
- Validate request method and URL scheme, preserving the transport
boundary at plain HTTP.
- Return buffered responses for ordinary calls and emit ordered
`http/request/bodyDelta` notifications for streaming responses.
- Register the request handler in the exec-server router.
- Document the runner entrypoint, conversion helpers, body-stream
bridge, notification sender, timeout behavior, and new integration-test
helpers.
- Add exec-server integration tests with the existing websocket harness
and a local TCP HTTP peer for buffered and streamed responses, with
comments spelling out what each test proves and its
setup/exercise/assert phases.
### Stack
1. #18581 protocol
2. #18582 runner
3. #18583 RMCP client
4. #18584 manager wiring and local/remote coverage
### Verification
- `just fmt`
- `cargo check -p codex-exec-server -p codex-rmcp-client --tests`
- `cargo check -p codex-core --test all` compile-only
- `git diff --check`
- Online full CI is running from the `full-ci` branch, including the
remote Rust test job.
Co-authored-by: Codex <noreply@openai.com>
---------
Co-authored-by: Codex <noreply@openai.com>
## Summary
- Reject new exec-server client operations once the transport has
disconnected.
- Convert pending RPC calls into closed errors instead of synthetic
server errors.
- Cover pending read and later write behavior after remote executor
disconnect.
## Verification
- `just fmt`
- `cargo check -p codex-exec-server`
## Stack
```text
@ #18027 [6/6] Fail exec client operations after disconnect
│
o #18212 [5/6] Wire executor-backed MCP stdio
│
o #18087 [4/6] Abstract MCP stdio server launching
│
o #18020 [3/6] Add pushed exec process events
│
o #18086 [2/6] Support piped stdin in exec process API
│
o #18085 [1/6] Add MCP server environment config
│
o main
```
---------
Co-authored-by: Codex <noreply@openai.com>
This introduces session-scoped ownership for exec-server so ws
disconnects no longer immediately kill running remote exec processes,
and it prepares the protocol for reconnect-based resume.
- add session_id / resume_session_id to the exec-server initialize
handshake
- move process ownership under a shared session registry
- detach sessions on websocket disconnect and expire them after a TTL
instead of killing processes immediately (we will resume based on this)
- allow a new connection to resume an existing session and take over
notifications/ownership
- I use UUID to make them not predictable as we don't have auth for now
- make detached-session expiry authoritative at resume time so teardown
wins at the TTL boundary
- reject long-poll process/read calls that get resumed out from under an
older attachment
---------
Co-authored-by: Codex <noreply@openai.com>
## Summary
- make AGENTS.md discovery and loading fully FS-aware and remove the
non-FS discover helper
- migrate remote-aware codex-core tests to use TestEnv workspace setup
instead of syncing a local workspace copy
- add AGENTS.md corner-case coverage, including directory fallbacks and
remote-aware integration coverage
## Testing
- cargo test -p codex-core project_doc -- --nocapture
- cargo test -p codex-core hierarchical_agents -- --nocapture
- cargo test -p codex-core agents_md -- --nocapture
- cargo test -p codex-tui status -- --nocapture
- cargo test -p codex-tui-app-server status -- --nocapture
- just fix
- just fmt
- just bazel-lock-update
- just bazel-lock-check
- just argument-comment-lint
- remote Linux executor tests in progress via scripts/test-remote-env.sh
This PR partially rebase `unified_exec` on the `exec-server` and adapt
the `exec-server` accordingly.
## What changed in `exec-server`
1. Replaced the old "broadcast-driven; process-global" event model with
process-scoped session events. The goal is to be able to have dedicated
handler for each process.
2. Add to protocol contract to support explicit lifecycle status and
stream ordering:
- `WriteResponse` now returns `WriteStatus` (Accepted, UnknownProcess,
StdinClosed, Starting) instead of a bool.
- Added seq fields to output/exited notifications.
- Added terminal process/closed notification.
3. Demultiplexed remote notifications into per-process channels. Same as
for the event sys
4. Local and remote backends now both implement ExecBackend.
5. Local backend wraps internal process ID/operations into per-process
ExecProcess objects.
6. Remote backend registers a session channel before launch and
unregisters on failed launch.
## What changed in `unified_exec`
1. Added unified process-state model and backend-neutral process
wrapper. This will probably disappear in the future, but it makes it
easier to keep the work flowing on both side.
- `UnifiedExecProcess` now handles both local PTY sessions and remote
exec-server processes through a shared `ProcessHandle`.
- Added `ProcessState` to track has_exited, exit_code, and terminal
failure message consistently across backends.
2. Routed write and lifecycle handling through process-level methods.
## Some rationals
1. The change centralizes execution transport in exec-server while
preserving policy and orchestration ownership in core, avoiding
duplicated launch approval logic. This comes from internal discussion.
2. Session-scoped events remove coupling/cross-talk between processes
and make stream ordering and terminal state explicit (seq, closed,
failed).
3. The failure-path surfacing (remote launch failures, write failures,
transport disconnects) makes command tool output and cleanup behavior
deterministic
## Follow-ups:
* Unify the concept of thread ID behind an obfuscated struct
* FD handling
* Full zsh-fork compatibility
* Full network sandboxing compatibility
* Handle ws disconnection
Stacked PR 2/3, based on the stub PR.
Adds the exec RPC implementation and process/event flow in exec-server
only.
---------
Co-authored-by: Codex <noreply@openai.com>
Stacked PR 1/3.
This is the initialize-only exec-server stub slice: binary/client
scaffolding and protocol docs, without exec/filesystem implementation.
---------
Co-authored-by: Codex <noreply@openai.com>
richardopenai ·
Adam Perry @ OpenAI ·
jif ·
starr-openai ·
Ahmed Ibrahim ·
pakrym-oai ·