This updates `codex exec` so that, by default, most of the agent's
activity is written to stderr so that only the final agent message is
written to stdout. This makes it easier to pipe `codex exec` into
another tool without extra filtering.
I introduced `#![deny(clippy::print_stdout)]` to help enforce this
change and renamed the `ts_println!()` macro to `ts_msg()` because (1)
it no longer calls `println!()` and (2), `ts_eprintln!()` seemed too
long of a name.
While here, this also adds `-o` as an alias for `--output-last-message`.
Fixes https://github.com/openai/codex/issues/1670
# Tool System Refactor
- Centralizes tool definitions and execution in `core/src/tools/*`:
specs (`spec.rs`), handlers (`handlers/*`), router (`router.rs`),
registry/dispatch (`registry.rs`), and shared context (`context.rs`).
One registry now builds the model-visible tool list and binds handlers.
- Router converts model responses to tool calls; Registry dispatches
with consistent telemetry via `codex-rs/otel` and unified error
handling. Function, Local Shell, MCP, and experimental `unified_exec`
all flow through this path; legacy shell aliases still work.
- Rationale: reduce per‑tool boilerplate, keep spec/handler in sync, and
make adding tools predictable and testable.
Example: `read_file`
- Spec: `core/src/tools/spec.rs` (see `create_read_file_tool`,
registered by `build_specs`).
- Handler: `core/src/tools/handlers/read_file.rs` (absolute `file_path`,
1‑indexed `offset`, `limit`, `L#: ` prefixes, safe truncation).
- E2E test: `core/tests/suite/read_file.rs` validates the tool returns
the requested lines.
## Next steps:
- Decompose `handle_container_exec_with_params`
- Add parallel tool calls
This pull request add a new experimental format of JSON output.
You can try it using `codex exec --experimental-json`.
Design takes a lot of inspiration from Responses API items and stream
format.
# Session and items
Each invocation of `codex exec` starts or resumes a session.
Session contains multiple high-level item types:
1. Assistant message
2. Assistant thinking
3. Command execution
4. File changes
5. To-do lists
6. etc.
# Events
Session and items are going through their life cycles which is
represented by events.
Session is `session.created` or `session.resumed`
Items are `item.added`, `item.updated`, `item.completed`,
`item.require_approval` (or other item types like `item.output_delta`
when we need streaming).
So a typical session can look like:
<details>
```
{
"type": "session.created",
"session_id": "01997dac-9581-7de3-b6a0-1df8256f2752"
}
{
"type": "item.completed",
"item": {
"id": "itm_0",
"item_type": "assistant_message",
"text": "I’ll locate the top-level README and remove its first line. Then I’ll show a quick summary of what changed."
}
}
{
"type": "item.completed",
"item": {
"id": "itm_1",
"item_type": "command_execution",
"command": "bash -lc ls -la | sed -n '1,200p'",
"aggregated_output": "pyenv: cannot rehash: /Users/pakrym/.pyenv/shims isn't writable\ntotal 192\ndrwxr-xr-x@ 33 pakrym staff 1056 Sep 24 14:36 .\ndrwxr-xr-x 41 pakrym staff 1312 Sep 24 09:17 ..\n-rw-r--r--@ 1 pakrym staff 6 Jul 9 16:16 .codespellignore\n-rw-r--r--@ 1 pakrym staff 258 Aug 13 09:40 .codespellrc\ndrwxr-xr-x@ 5 pakrym staff 160 Jul 23 08:26 .devcontainer\n-rw-r--r--@ 1 pakrym staff 6148 Jul 22 10:03 .DS_Store\ndrwxr-xr-x@ 15 pakrym staff 480 Sep 24 14:38 .git\ndrwxr-xr-x@ 12 pakrym staff 384 Sep 2 16:00 .github\n-rw-r--r--@ 1 pakrym staff 778 Jul 9 16:16 .gitignore\ndrwxr-xr-x@ 3 pakrym staff 96 Aug 11 09:37 .husky\n-rw-r--r--@ 1 pakrym staff 104 Jul 9 16:16 .npmrc\n-rw-r--r--@ 1 pakrym staff 96 Sep 2 08:52 .prettierignore\n-rw-r--r--@ 1 pakrym staff 170 Jul 9 16:16 .prettierrc.toml\ndrwxr-xr-x@ 5 pakrym staff 160 Sep 14 17:43 .vscode\ndrwxr-xr-x@ 2 pakrym staff 64 Sep 11 11:37 2025-09-11\n-rw-r--r--@ 1 pakrym staff 5505 Sep 18 09:28 AGENTS.md\n-rw-r--r--@ 1 pakrym staff 92 Sep 2 08:52 CHANGELOG.md\n-rw-r--r--@ 1 pakrym staff 1145 Jul 9 16:16 cliff.toml\ndrwxr-xr-x@ 11 pakrym staff 352 Sep 24 13:03 codex-cli\ndrwxr-xr-x@ 38 pakrym staff 1216 Sep 24 14:38 codex-rs\ndrwxr-xr-x@ 18 pakrym staff 576 Sep 23 11:01 docs\n-rw-r--r--@ 1 pakrym staff 2038 Jul 9 16:16 flake.lock\n-rw-r--r--@ 1 pakrym staff 1434 Jul 9 16:16 flake.nix\n-rw-r--r--@ 1 pakrym staff 10926 Jul 9 16:16 LICENSE\ndrwxr-xr-x@ 465 pakrym staff 14880 Jul 15 07:36 node_modules\n-rw-r--r--@ 1 pakrym staff 242 Aug 5 08:25 NOTICE\n-rw-r--r--@ 1 pakrym staff 578 Aug 14 12:31 package.json\n-rw-r--r--@ 1 pakrym staff 498 Aug 11 09:37 pnpm-lock.yaml\n-rw-r--r--@ 1 pakrym staff 58 Aug 11 09:37 pnpm-workspace.yaml\n-rw-r--r--@ 1 pakrym staff 2402 Jul 9 16:16 PNPM.md\n-rw-r--r--@ 1 pakrym staff 4393 Sep 12 14:36 README.md\ndrwxr-xr-x@ 4 pakrym staff 128 Sep 18 09:28 scripts\ndrwxr-xr-x@ 2 pakrym staff 64 Sep 11 11:34 tmp\n",
"exit_code": 0,
"status": "completed"
}
}
{
"type": "item.completed",
"item": {
"id": "itm_2",
"item_type": "reasoning",
"text": "**Reviewing README.md file**\n\nI've located the README.md file at the root, and it’s 4393 bytes. Now, I need to remove the first line, but first, I should check its content to make sure I’m patching it correctly. I’ll use sed to display the first 20 lines. By reviewing those lines, I can determine exactly what needs to be removed before I proceed with the editing. Let's do this carefully!"
}
}
{
"type": "item.completed",
"item": {
"id": "itm_3",
"item_type": "command_execution",
"command": "bash -lc sed -n '1,40p' README.md",
"aggregated_output": "<h1 align=\"center\">OpenAI Codex CLI</h1>\n\n<p align=\"center\"><code>npm i -g @openai/codex</code><br />or <code>brew install codex</code></p>\n\n<p align=\"center\"><strong>Codex CLI</strong> is a coding agent from OpenAI that runs locally on your computer.\n</br>\n</br>If you want Codex in your code editor (VS Code, Cursor, Windsurf), <a href=\"https://developers.openai.com/codex/ide\">install in your IDE</a>\n</br>If you are looking for the <em>cloud-based agent</em> from OpenAI, <strong>Codex Web</strong>, go to <a href=\"https://chatgpt.com/codex\">chatgpt.com/codex</a></p>\n\n<p align=\"center\">\n <img src=\"./.github/codex-cli-splash.png\" alt=\"Codex CLI splash\" width=\"80%\" />\n </p>\n\n---\n\n## Quickstart\n\n### Installing and running Codex CLI\n\nInstall globally with your preferred package manager. If you use npm:\n\n```shell\nnpm install -g @openai/codex\n```\n\nAlternatively, if you use Homebrew:\n\n```shell\nbrew install codex\n```\n\nThen simply run `codex` to get started:\n\n```shell\ncodex\n```\n\n<details>\n<summary>You can also go to the <a href=\"https://github.com/openai/codex/releases/latest\">latest GitHub Release</a> and download the appropriate binary for your platform.</summary>\n\n",
"exit_code": 0,
"status": "completed"
}
}
{
"type": "item.completed",
"item": {
"id": "itm_4",
"item_type": "reasoning",
"text": "**Updating README file**\n\nThe user wants to update the README by removing the first line, which is an HTML h1 tag. I'll proceed to delete that line while keeping the rest intact. To do this, I need to use the apply_patch tool and create a patch in the diff format. I’ll take care to include context lines around the change. After removing the header, I’m considering whether to delete the following blank line as well to keep it tidy."
}
}
{
"type": "item.completed",
"item": {
"id": "itm_5",
"item_type": "reasoning",
"text": "**Crafting the patch**\n\nThe user has asked to remove just the first line, without mentioning the blank lines. Technically, leaving a blank line at the start is acceptable, but it's not ideal. Ideally, I'd prefer to remove the first line while maintaining the subsequent blank line. However, if I can also remove that blank line, it could tidy things up even more. Still, since the user's request is strictly to remove only the first line, I'll stick to that and craft the patch accordingly."
}
}
{
"type": "item.completed",
"item": {
"id": "itm_6",
"item_type": "assistant_message",
"text": "Applying the change by removing the first line from `README.md`."
}
}
{
"type": "item.completed",
"item": {
"id": "itm_7",
"item_type": "file_change",
"changes": [
{
"path": "/Users/pakrym/code/codex/README.md",
"kind": "update"
}
],
"status": "completed"
}
}
{
"type": "item.completed",
"item": {
"id": "itm_8",
"item_type": "reasoning",
"text": "**Validating README Update**\n\nI updated the README.md and now I need to validate that the first line has been successfully removed. To do this, I'll check the first 10 lines of the document to ensure everything looks correct. It’s always good to double-check these kinds of changes, so I’m going to take that extra step to make sure the update was executed properly. Let's see what those initial lines say!"
}
}
{
"type": "item.completed",
"item": {
"id": "itm_9",
"item_type": "command_execution",
"command": "bash -lc sed -n '1,20p' README.md",
"aggregated_output": "\n<p align=\"center\"><code>npm i -g @openai/codex</code><br />or <code>brew install codex</code></p>\n\n<p align=\"center\"><strong>Codex CLI</strong> is a coding agent from OpenAI that runs locally on your computer.\n</br>\n</br>If you want Codex in your code editor (VS Code, Cursor, Windsurf), <a href=\"https://developers.openai.com/codex/ide\">install in your IDE</a>\n</br>If you are looking for the <em>cloud-based agent</em> from OpenAI, <strong>Codex Web</strong>, go to <a href=\"https://chatgpt.com/codex\">chatgpt.com/codex</a></p>\n\n<p align=\"center\">\n <img src=\"./.github/codex-cli-splash.png\" alt=\"Codex CLI splash\" width=\"80%\" />\n </p>\n\n---\n\n## Quickstart\n\n### Installing and running Codex CLI\n\nInstall globally with your preferred package manager. If you use npm:\n\n",
"exit_code": 0,
"status": "completed"
}
}
{
"type": "item.completed",
"item": {
"id": "itm_10",
"item_type": "assistant_message",
"text": "- Updated `README.md:1` by removing the opening H1 line.\n- The README now starts with the install instructions paragraph.\n\nWant me to also remove the leading blank line at the top?"
}
}
```
</details>
The idea is to give users fully formatted items they can use directly in
their rendering/application logic and avoid having them building up
items manually based on events (unless they want to for streaming).
This PR implements only the `item.completed` payload for some event
types, more event types and item types to come.
---------
Co-authored-by: Michael Bolin <mbolin@openai.com>
### Summary
Sometimes in exec runs, we want to allow the model to use the
`update_plan` tool, but that's not easily configurable. This change adds
a feature flag for this, and formats the output so it's human-readable
## Test Plan
<img width="1280" height="354" alt="Screenshot 2025-09-11 at 12 39
44 AM"
src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/72e11070-fb98-47f5-a784-5123ca7333d9"
/>
## 📝 Review Mode -- Core
This PR introduces the Core implementation for Review mode:
- New op `Op::Review { prompt: String }:` spawns a child review task
with isolated context, a review‑specific system prompt, and a
`Config.review_model`.
- `EnteredReviewMode`: emitted when the child review session starts.
Every event from this point onwards reflects the review session.
- `ExitedReviewMode(Option<ReviewOutputEvent>)`: emitted when the review
finishes or is interrupted, with optional structured findings:
```json
{
"findings": [
{
"title": "<≤ 80 chars, imperative>",
"body": "<valid Markdown explaining *why* this is a problem; cite files/lines/functions>",
"confidence_score": <float 0.0-1.0>,
"priority": <int 0-3>,
"code_location": {
"absolute_file_path": "<file path>",
"line_range": {"start": <int>, "end": <int>}
}
}
],
"overall_correctness": "patch is correct" | "patch is incorrect",
"overall_explanation": "<1-3 sentence explanation justifying the overall_correctness verdict>",
"overall_confidence_score": <float 0.0-1.0>
}
```
## Questions
### Why separate out its own message history?
We want the review thread to match the training of our review models as
much as possible -- that means using a custom prompt, removing user
instructions, and starting a clean chat history.
We also want to make sure the review thread doesn't leak into the parent
thread.
### Why do this as a mode, vs. sub-agents?
1. We want review to be a synchronous task, so it's fine for now to do a
bespoke implementation.
2. We're still unclear about the final structure for sub-agents. We'd
prefer to land this quickly and then refactor into sub-agents without
rushing that implementation.
`ClientRequest::NewConversation` picks up the reasoning level from the user's defaults in `config.toml`, so it should be reported in `NewConversationResponse`.
Created this PR by:
- adding `redundant_clone` to `[workspace.lints.clippy]` in
`cargo-rs/Cargol.toml`
- running `cargo clippy --tests --fix`
- running `just fmt`
Though I had to clean up one instance of the following that resulted:
```rust
let codex = codex;
```
This PR changes get history op to get path. Then, forking will use a
path. This will help us have one unified codepath for resuming/forking
conversations. Will also help in having rollout history in order. It
also fixes a bug where you won't see the UI when resuming after forking.
Adding the `rollout_path` to the `NewConversationResponse` makes it so a
client can perform subsequent operations on a `(ConversationId,
PathBuf)` pair. #3353 will introduce support for `ArchiveConversation`.
---
[//]: # (BEGIN SAPLING FOOTER)
Stack created with [Sapling](https://sapling-scm.com). Best reviewed
with [ReviewStack](https://reviewstack.dev/openai/codex/pull/3352).
* #3353
* __->__ #3352
- In the bottom line of the TUI, print the number of tokens to 3 sigfigs
with an SI suffix, e.g. "1.23K".
- Elsewhere where we print a number, I figure it's worthwhile to print
the exact number, because e.g. it's a summary of your session. Here we print
the numbers comma-separated.
We're trying to migrate from `session_id: Uuid` to `conversation_id:
ConversationId`. Not only does this give us more type safety but it
unifies our terminology across Codex and with the implementation of
session resuming, a conversation (which can span multiple sessions) is
more appropriate.
I started this impl on https://github.com/openai/codex/pull/3219 as part
of getting resume working in the extension but it's big enough that it
should be broken out.
This PR does the following:
- divides user msgs into 3 categories: plain, user instructions, and
environment context
- Centralizes adding user instructions and environment context to a
degree
- Improve the integration testing
Building on top of #3123
Specifically this
[comment](https://github.com/openai/codex/pull/3123#discussion_r2319885089).
We need to send the user message while ignoring the User Instructions
and Environment Context we attach.
### Overview
This PR introduces the following changes:
1. Adds a unified mechanism to convert ResponseItem into EventMsg.
2. Ensures that when a session is initialized with initial history, a
vector of EventMsg is sent along with the session configuration. This
allows clients to re-render the UI accordingly.
3. Added integration testing
### Caveats
This implementation does not send every EventMsg that was previously
dispatched to clients. The excluded events fall into two categories:
• “Arguably” rolled-out events
Examples include tool calls and apply-patch calls. While these events
are conceptually rolled out, we currently only roll out ResponseItems.
These events are already being handled elsewhere and transformed into
EventMsg before being sent.
• Non-rolled-out events
Certain events such as TurnDiff, Error, and TokenCount are not rolled
out at all.
### Future Directions
At present, resuming a session involves maintaining two states:
• UI State
Clients can replay most of the important UI from the provided EventMsg
history.
• Model State
The model receives the complete session history to reconstruct its
internal state.
This design provides a solid foundation. If, in the future, more precise
UI reconstruction is needed, we have two potential paths:
1. Introduce a third data structure that allows us to derive both
ResponseItems and EventMsgs.
2. Clearly divide responsibilities: the core system ensures the
integrity of the model state, while clients are responsible for
reconstructing the UI.
- Introduce websearch end to complement the begin
- Moves the logic of adding the sebsearch tool to
create_tools_json_for_responses_api
- Making it the client responsibility to toggle the tool on or off
- Other misc in #2371 post commit feedback
- Show the query:
<img width="1392" height="151" alt="image"
src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/8457f1a6-f851-44cf-bcca-0d4fe460ce89"
/>
Adds custom `/prompts` to `~/.codex/prompts/<command>.md`.
<img width="239" height="107" alt="Screenshot 2025-08-25 at 6 22 42 PM"
src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/fe6ebbaa-1bf6-49d3-95f9-fdc53b752679"
/>
---
Details:
1. Adds `Op::ListCustomPrompts` to core.
2. Returns `ListCustomPromptsResponse` with list of `CustomPrompt`
(name, content).
3. TUI calls the operation on load, and populates the custom prompts
(excluding prompts that collide with builtins).
4. Selecting the custom prompt automatically sends the prompt to the
agent.
Adds web_search tool, enabling the model to use Responses API web_search
tool.
- Disabled by default, enabled by --search flag
- When --search is passed, exposes web_search_request function tool to
the model, which triggers user approval. When approved, the model can
use the web_search tool for the remainder of the turn
<img width="1033" height="294" alt="image"
src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/62ac6563-b946-465c-ba5d-9325af28b28f"
/>
---------
Co-authored-by: easong-openai <easong@openai.com>
We want to send an aggregated output of stderr and stdout so we don't
have to aggregate it stderr+stdout as we lose order sometimes.
---------
Co-authored-by: Gabriel Peal <gpeal@users.noreply.github.com>
This can be the underlying logic in order to start a conversation from a
previous message. will need some love in the UI.
Base for building this: #2588
## Summary
Adds a `/mcp` command to list active tools. We can extend this command
to allow configuration of MCP tools, but for now a simple list command
will help debug if your config.toml and your tools are working as
expected.
Introduces `EventMsg::TurnAborted` that should be sent in response to
`Op::Interrupt`.
In the MCP server, updates the handling of a
`ClientRequest::InterruptConversation` request such that it sends the
`Op::Interrupt` but does not respond to the request until it sees an
`EventMsg::TurnAborted`.
This PR:
* Added the clippy.toml to configure allowable expect / unwrap usage in
tests
* Removed as many expect/allow lines as possible from tests
* moved a bunch of allows to expects where possible
Note: in integration tests, non `#[test]` helper functions are not
covered by this so we had to leave a few lingering `expect(expect_used`
checks around
Wait for newlines, then render markdown on a line by line basis. Word wrap it for the current terminal size and then spit it out line by line into the UI. Also adds tests and fixes some UI regressions.
# Note for reviewers
The bulk of this PR is in in the new file, `parse_command.rs`. This file
is designed to be written TDD and implemented with Codex. Do not worry
about reviewing the code, just review the unit tests (if you want). If
any cases are missing, we'll add more tests and have Codex fix them.
I think the best approach will be to land and iterate. I have some
follow-ups I want to do after this lands. The next PR after this will
let us merge (and dedupe) multiple sequential cells of the same such as
multiple read commands. The deduping will also be important because the
model often reads the same file multiple times in a row in chunks
===
This PR formats common commands like reading, formatting, testing, etc
more nicely:
It tries to extract things like file names, tests and falls back to the
cmd if it doesn't. It also only shows stdout/err if the command failed.
<img width="770" height="238" alt="CleanShot 2025-08-09 at 16 05 15"
src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/0ead179a-8910-486b-aa3d-7d26264d751e"
/>
<img width="348" height="158" alt="CleanShot 2025-08-09 at 16 05 32"
src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/4302681b-5e87-4ff3-85b4-0252c6c485a9"
/>
<img width="834" height="324" alt="CleanShot 2025-08-09 at 16 05 56 2"
src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/09fb3517-7bd6-40f6-a126-4172106b700f"
/>
Part 2: https://github.com/openai/codex/pull/2097
Part 3: https://github.com/openai/codex/pull/2110
- For absolute, use non-cached input + output.
- For estimating what % of the model's context window is used, we need
to account for reasoning output tokens from prior turns being dropped
from the context window. We approximate this here by subtracting
reasoning output tokens from the total. This will be off for the current
turn and pending function calls. We can improve it later.
- Added a `/status` command, which will be useful when we update the
home screen to print less status.
- Moved `create_config_summary_entries` to common since it's used in a
few places.
- Noticed we inconsistently had periods in slash command descriptions
and just removed them everywhere.
- Noticed the diff description was overflowing so made it shorter.
https://github.com/openai/codex/pull/1835 has some messed up history.
This adds support for streaming chat completions, which is useful for ollama. We should probably take a very skeptical eye to the code introduced in this PR.
---------
Co-authored-by: Ahmed Ibrahim <aibrahim@openai.com>
Previously, `codex exec` was printing `Warning: no file to write last
message to` as a warning to stderr even though `--output-last-message`
was not specified, which is wrong. This fixes the code and changes
`handle_last_message()` so that it is only called when
`last_message_path` is `Some`.
This lets us show an accumulating diff across all patches in a turn.
Refer to the docs for TurnDiffTracker for implementation details.
There are multiple ways this could have been done and this felt like the
right tradeoff between reliability and completeness:
*Pros*
* It will pick up all changes to files that the model touched including
if they prettier or another command that updates them.
* It will not pick up changes made by the user or other agents to files
it didn't modify.
*Cons*
* It will pick up changes that the user made to a file that the model
also touched
* It will not pick up changes to codegen or files that were not modified
with apply_patch
## Summary
- stream command stdout as `ExecCommandStdout` events
- forward streamed stdout to clients and ignore in human output
processor
- adjust call sites for new streaming API
This adds a tool the model can call to update a plan. The tool doesn't
actually _do_ anything but it gives clients a chance to read and render
the structured plan. We will likely iterate on the prompt and tools
exposed for planning over time.
This is designed to facilitate programmatic use of Codex in a more
lightweight way than using `codex mcp`.
Passing `--json` to `codex exec` will print each event as a line of JSON
to stdout. Note that it does not print the individual tokens as they are
streamed, only full messages, as this is aimed at programmatic use
rather than to power UI.
<img width="1348" height="1307" alt="image"
src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/fc7908de-b78d-46e4-a6ff-c85de28415c7"
/>
I changed the existing `EventProcessor` into a trait and moved the
implementation to `EventProcessorWithHumanOutput`. Then I introduced an
alternative implementation, `EventProcessorWithJsonOutput`. The `--json`
flag determines which implementation to use.
dedrisian-oai ·
Michael Bolin ·
jif-oai ·
pakrym-oai ·
Jeremy Rose ·
Dylan ·
Ahmed Ibrahim ·
Justin Lebar ·
Gabriel Peal ·
Reuben Narad ·
easong-openai ·
Parker Thompson ·
ae ·