Chriss4123andGitHub
12779c7c07
### Problem Ctrl+T transcript overlay can omit in-flight coalesced tool calls because it renders only committed transcript cells while the main viewport can render the current in-flight ChatWidget.active_cell immediately. ### Mental model The UI has both committed transcript cells (finalized HistoryCell entries) and an in-flight active cell that can mutate in place while streaming, often representing a coalesced exec/tool group. The transcript overlay renders committed cells plus a render-only live tail derived from the current active cell. The live tail is cached and only recomputed when its cache key changes, which is derived from terminal width (wrapping), active-cell revision (in-place mutations), stream continuation (spacing), and animation tick (time-based visuals). ### Non-goals This does not change coalescing rules, flush boundaries, or when active cells become committed. It does not change tool-call semantics or transcript persistence; it is a rendering-only improvement for the overlay. ### Tradeoffs This adds cache invalidation complexity: correctness depends on bumping an active-cell revision (and/or providing an animation tick) when the active cell mutates in place. The mechanism is implemented in both codex-tui and codex-tui2, which keeps behavior consistent but risks drift if future changes are not applied in lockstep. ### Architecture App special-cases transcript overlay draws to sync a live tail from ChatWidget into TranscriptOverlay. TranscriptOverlay remains the owner of committed transcript cells; the live tail is an optional appended renderable. HistoryCell::transcript_animation_tick() allows time-dependent transcript output (spinner/shimmer) to invalidate the cached tail without requiring data mutation. ### Observability Manual verification is to open Ctrl+T while an exploring/coalesced active cell is still in-flight and confirm the overlay includes the same in-flight tool-call group the main viewport shows. The overlay is kept in sync by App passing an active-cell key and transcript lines into TranscriptOverlay::sync_live_tail; the key must change when the active cell mutates or animates. ### Tests Snapshot tests validate that the transcript overlay renders a live tail appended after committed cells and that identical keys short-circuit recomputation. Unit tests validate that active-cell revision bumps occur on specific in-place mutations (e.g. unified exec wait cell command display becoming known late) so cached tails are invalidated. ## Documentation patches (module, type, function) ### Module-level docs (invariants + mechanisms) - codex-rs/tui/src/app_backtrack.rs:1 - codex-rs/tui/src/chatwidget.rs:1 - codex-rs/tui/src/pager_overlay.rs:1 - codex-rs/tui/src/history_cell.rs:1 - codex-rs/tui2/src/app_backtrack.rs:1 - codex-rs/tui2/src/chatwidget.rs:1 - codex-rs/tui2/src/pager_overlay.rs:1 - codex-rs/tui2/src/history_cell.rs:1 ### Type-level docs (cache key + invariants) - codex-rs/tui/src/chatwidget.rs (ChatWidget.active_cell_revision, ActiveCellTranscriptKey) - codex-rs/tui/src/pager_overlay.rs (TranscriptOverlay live tail storage model) - codex-rs/tui/src/history_cell.rs (HistoryCell::transcript_animation_tick, UnifiedExecWaitCell::update_command_display) - Mirrored in codex-rs/tui2/src/chatwidget.rs, codex-rs/tui2/src/pager_overlay.rs, codex-rs/tui2/src/history_cell.rs ### Function-level docs (why/when/guarantees/pitfalls) - codex-rs/tui/src/app_backtrack.rs (overlay_forward_event) - codex-rs/tui/src/chatwidget.rs (active_cell_transcript_key, active_cell_transcript_lines) - codex-rs/tui/src/pager_overlay.rs (sync_live_tail, take_live_tail_renderable) - codex-rs/tui/src/history_cell.rs (transcript_animation_tick, UnifiedExecWaitCell::update_command_display) - Mirrored in codex-rs/tui2 equivalents where present ### Validation performed - cd codex-rs && just fmt - cd codex-rs && cargo test -p codex-tui - cd codex-rs && cargo test -p codex-tui2 ## Design inconsistencies / risks - Cache invalidation is a distributed responsibility: any future in-place active cell transcript mutation that forgets to bump active_cell_revision (or expose an animation tick) can leave the transcript overlay live tail out of sync with the main viewport. - TranscriptOverlay tail handling assumes a structural invariant that the live tail, when present, is exactly one trailing renderable after the committed cell renderables; if renderable construction changes in a way that violates that assumption, tail insertion/removal logic becomes incorrect. - codex-tui and codex-tui2 duplicate the live-tail mechanism; the documentation is aligned, but the implementation can still drift unless changes continue to be applied in lockstep.
Codex CLI (Rust Implementation)
We provide Codex CLI as a standalone, native executable to ensure a zero-dependency install.
Installing Codex
Today, the easiest way to install Codex is via npm:
npm i -g @openai/codex
codex
You can also install via Homebrew (brew install --cask codex) or download a platform-specific release directly from our GitHub Releases.
Documentation quickstart
- First run with Codex? Start with
docs/getting-started.md(links to the walkthrough for prompts, keyboard shortcuts, and session management). - Want deeper control? See
docs/config.mdanddocs/install.md.
What's new in the Rust CLI
The Rust implementation is now the maintained Codex CLI and serves as the default experience. It includes a number of features that the legacy TypeScript CLI never supported.
Config
Codex supports a rich set of configuration options. Note that the Rust CLI uses config.toml instead of config.json. See docs/config.md for details.
Model Context Protocol Support
MCP client
Codex CLI functions as an MCP client that allows the Codex CLI and IDE extension to connect to MCP servers on startup. See the configuration documentation for details.
MCP server (experimental)
Codex can be launched as an MCP server by running codex mcp-server. This allows other MCP clients to use Codex as a tool for another agent.
Use the @modelcontextprotocol/inspector to try it out:
npx @modelcontextprotocol/inspector codex mcp-server
Use codex mcp to add/list/get/remove MCP server launchers defined in config.toml, and codex mcp-server to run the MCP server directly.
Notifications
You can enable notifications by configuring a script that is run whenever the agent finishes a turn. The notify documentation includes a detailed example that explains how to get desktop notifications via terminal-notifier on macOS. When Codex detects that it is running under WSL 2 inside Windows Terminal (WT_SESSION is set), the TUI automatically falls back to native Windows toast notifications so approval prompts and completed turns surface even though Windows Terminal does not implement OSC 9.
codex exec to run Codex programmatically/non-interactively
To run Codex non-interactively, run codex exec PROMPT (you can also pass the prompt via stdin) and Codex will work on your task until it decides that it is done and exits. Output is printed to the terminal directly. You can set the RUST_LOG environment variable to see more about what's going on.
Experimenting with the Codex Sandbox
To test to see what happens when a command is run under the sandbox provided by Codex, we provide the following subcommands in Codex CLI:
# macOS
codex sandbox macos [--full-auto] [--log-denials] [COMMAND]...
# Linux
codex sandbox linux [--full-auto] [COMMAND]...
# Windows
codex sandbox windows [--full-auto] [COMMAND]...
# Legacy aliases
codex debug seatbelt [--full-auto] [--log-denials] [COMMAND]...
codex debug landlock [--full-auto] [COMMAND]...
Selecting a sandbox policy via --sandbox
The Rust CLI exposes a dedicated --sandbox (-s) flag that lets you pick the sandbox policy without having to reach for the generic -c/--config option:
# Run Codex with the default, read-only sandbox
codex --sandbox read-only
# Allow the agent to write within the current workspace while still blocking network access
codex --sandbox workspace-write
# Danger! Disable sandboxing entirely (only do this if you are already running in a container or other isolated env)
codex --sandbox danger-full-access
The same setting can be persisted in ~/.codex/config.toml via the top-level sandbox_mode = "MODE" key, e.g. sandbox_mode = "workspace-write".
Code Organization
This folder is the root of a Cargo workspace. It contains quite a bit of experimental code, but here are the key crates:
core/contains the business logic for Codex. Ultimately, we hope this to be a library crate that is generally useful for building other Rust/native applications that use Codex.exec/"headless" CLI for use in automation.tui/CLI that launches a fullscreen TUI built with Ratatui.cli/CLI multitool that provides the aforementioned CLIs via subcommands.