Felipe Coury
2c54d4b160
## TR;DR
Replicates the `/title` command from `tui` to `tui_app_server`.
## Problem
The classic `tui` crate supports customizing the terminal window/tab
title via `/title`, but the `tui_app_server` crate does not. Users on
the app-server path have no way to configure what their terminal title
shows (project name, status, spinner, thread, etc.), making it harder to
identify Codex sessions across tabs or windows.
## Mental model
The terminal title is a *status surface* -- conceptually parallel to the
footer status line. Both surfaces are configurable lists of items, both
share expensive inputs (git branch lookup, project root discovery), and
both must be refreshed at the same lifecycle points. This change ports
the classic `tui`'s design verbatim:
1. **`terminal_title.rs`** owns the low-level OSC write path and input
sanitization. It strips control characters and bidi/invisible codepoints
before placing untrusted text (model output, thread names, project
paths) inside an escape sequence.
2. **`title_setup.rs`** defines `TerminalTitleItem` (the 8 configurable
items) and `TerminalTitleSetupView` (the interactive picker that wraps
`MultiSelectPicker`).
3. **`status_surfaces.rs`** is the shared refresh pipeline. It parses
both surface configs once per refresh, warns about invalid items once
per session, synchronizes the git-branch cache, then renders each
surface from the same `StatusSurfaceSelections` snapshot.
4. **`chatwidget.rs`** sets `TerminalTitleStatusKind` at each state
transition (Working, Thinking, Undoing, WaitingForBackgroundTerminal)
and calls `refresh_terminal_title()` whenever relevant state changes.
5. **`app.rs`** handles the three setup events (confirm/preview/cancel),
persists config via `ConfigEditsBuilder`, and clears the managed title
on `Drop`.
## Non-goals
- **Restoring the previous terminal title on exit.** There is no
portable way to read the terminal's current title, so `Drop` clears the
managed title rather than restoring it.
- **Sharing code between `tui` and `tui_app_server`.** The
implementation is a parallel copy, matching the existing pattern for the
status-line feature. Extracting a shared crate is future work.
## Tradeoffs
- **Duplicate code across crates.** The three core files
(`terminal_title.rs`, `title_setup.rs`, `status_surfaces.rs`) are
byte-for-byte copies from the classic `tui`. This was chosen for
consistency with the existing status-line port and to avoid coupling the
two crates at the dependency level. Future changes must be applied in
both places.
- **`status_surfaces.rs` is large (~660 lines).** It absorbs logic that
previously lived inline in `chatwidget.rs` (status-line refresh, git
branch management, project root discovery) plus all new terminal-title
logic. This consolidation trades file size for a single place where both
surfaces are coordinated.
- **Spinner scheduling on every refresh.** The terminal title spinner
(when active) schedules a frame every 100ms. This is the same pattern
the status-indicator spinner already uses; the overhead is a timer
registration, not a redraw.
## Architecture
```
/title command
-> SlashCommand::Title
-> open_terminal_title_setup()
-> TerminalTitleSetupView (MultiSelectPicker)
-> on_change: AppEvent::TerminalTitleSetupPreview -> preview_terminal_title()
-> on_confirm: AppEvent::TerminalTitleSetup -> ConfigEditsBuilder + setup_terminal_title()
-> on_cancel: AppEvent::TerminalTitleSetupCancelled -> cancel_terminal_title_setup()
Runtime title refresh:
state change (turn start, reasoning, undo, plan update, thread rename, ...)
-> set terminal_title_status_kind
-> refresh_terminal_title()
-> status_surface_selections() (parse configs, collect invalids)
-> refresh_terminal_title_from_selections()
-> terminal_title_value_for_item() for each configured item
-> assemble title string with separators
-> skip if identical to last_terminal_title (dedup OSC writes)
-> set_terminal_title() (sanitize + OSC 0 write)
-> schedule spinner frame if animating
Widget replacement:
replace_chat_widget_with_app_server_thread()
-> transfer last_terminal_title from old widget to new
-> avoids redundant OSC clear+rewrite on session switch
```
## Observability
- Invalid terminal-title item IDs in config emit a one-per-session
warning via `on_warning()` (gated by
`terminal_title_invalid_items_warned` `AtomicBool`).
- OSC write failures are logged at `tracing::debug` level.
- Config persistence failures are logged at `tracing::error` and
surfaced to the user via `add_error_message()`.
## Tests
- `terminal_title.rs`: 4 unit tests covering sanitization (control
chars, bidi codepoints, truncation) and OSC output format.
- `title_setup.rs`: 3 tests covering setup view snapshot rendering,
parse order preservation, and invalid-ID rejection.
- `chatwidget/tests.rs`: Updated test helpers with new fields; existing
tests continue to pass.
---------
Co-authored-by: Eric Traut <etraut@openai.com>
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.
Use codex exec --ephemeral ... to run without persisting session rollout files to disk.
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".
In workspace-write, Codex also includes ~/.codex/memories in its writable roots so memory maintenance does not require an extra approval.
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.
If you want to contribute or inspect behavior in detail, start by reading the module-level README.md files under each crate and run the project workspace from the top-level codex-rs directory so shared config, features, and build scripts stay aligned.