Michael Bolin
4816b89204
## Why
`PermissionProfile` is becoming the canonical permissions abstraction,
but the old shape only carried optional filesystem and network fields.
It could describe allowed access, but not who is responsible for
enforcing it. That made `DangerFullAccess` and `ExternalSandbox` lossy
when profiles were exported, cached, or round-tripped through app-server
APIs.
The important model change is that active permissions are now a disjoint
union over the enforcement mode. Conceptually:
```rust
pub enum PermissionProfile {
Managed {
file_system: FileSystemSandboxPolicy,
network: NetworkSandboxPolicy,
},
Disabled,
External {
network: NetworkSandboxPolicy,
},
}
```
This distinction matters because `Disabled` means Codex should apply no
outer sandbox at all, while `External` means filesystem isolation is
owned by an outside caller. Those are not equivalent to a broad managed
sandbox. For example, macOS cannot nest Seatbelt inside Seatbelt, so an
inner sandbox may require the outer Codex layer to use no sandbox rather
than a permissive one.
## How Existing Modeling Maps
Legacy `SandboxPolicy` remains a boundary projection, but it now maps
into the higher-fidelity profile model:
- `ReadOnly` and `WorkspaceWrite` map to `PermissionProfile::Managed`
with restricted filesystem entries plus the corresponding network
policy.
- `DangerFullAccess` maps to `PermissionProfile::Disabled`, preserving
the “no outer sandbox” intent instead of treating it as a lax managed
sandbox.
- `ExternalSandbox { network_access }` maps to
`PermissionProfile::External { network }`, preserving external
filesystem enforcement while still carrying the active network policy.
- Split runtime policies that legacy `SandboxPolicy` cannot faithfully
express, such as managed unrestricted filesystem plus restricted
network, stay `Managed` instead of being collapsed into
`ExternalSandbox`.
- Per-command/session/turn grants remain partial overlays via
`AdditionalPermissionProfile`; full `PermissionProfile` is reserved for
complete active runtime permissions.
## What Changed
- Change active `PermissionProfile` into a tagged union: `managed`,
`disabled`, and `external`.
- Keep partial permission grants separate with
`AdditionalPermissionProfile` for command/session/turn overlays.
- Represent managed filesystem permissions as either `restricted`
entries or `unrestricted`; `glob_scan_max_depth` is non-zero when
present.
- Preserve old rollout compatibility by accepting the pre-tagged `{
network, file_system }` profile shape during deserialization.
- Preserve fidelity for important edge cases: `DangerFullAccess`
round-trips as `disabled`, `ExternalSandbox` round-trips as `external`,
and managed unrestricted filesystem + restricted network stays managed
instead of being mistaken for external enforcement.
- Preserve configured deny-read entries and bounded glob scan depth when
full profiles are projected back into runtime policies, including
unrestricted replacements that now become `:root = write` plus deny
entries.
- Regenerate the experimental app-server v2 JSON/TypeScript schema and
update the `command/exec` README example for the tagged
`permissionProfile` shape.
## Compatibility
Legacy `SandboxPolicy` remains available at config/API boundaries as the
compatibility projection. Existing rollout lines with the old
`PermissionProfile` shape continue to load. The app-server
`permissionProfile` field is experimental, so its v2 wire shape is
intentionally updated to match the higher-fidelity model.
## Verification
- `just write-app-server-schema`
- `cargo check --tests`
- `cargo test -p codex-protocol permission_profile`
- `cargo test -p codex-protocol
preserving_deny_entries_keeps_unrestricted_policy_enforceable`
- `cargo test -p codex-app-server-protocol
permission_profile_file_system_permissions`
- `cargo test -p codex-app-server-protocol serialize_client_response`
- `cargo test -p codex-core
session_configured_reports_permission_profile_for_external_sandbox`
- `just fix`
- `just fix -p codex-protocol`
- `just fix -p codex-app-server-protocol`
- `just fix -p codex-core`
- `just fix -p codex-app-server`
Codex CLI (Rust Implementation)
We provide Codex CLI as a standalone 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. If you provide both a prompt argument and piped stdin, Codex appends stdin as a <stdin> block after the prompt so patterns like echo "my output" | codex exec "Summarize this concisely" work naturally. 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.