Felipe CouryandGitHub
d3692b14c9
## TL;DR - Adds a second Plan Mode handoff: implement the approved plan after clearing context. - Keeps the existing same-thread `Yes, implement this plan` action unchanged. - Reuses the `/clear` thread-start path and submits the approved plan as the fresh thread's first prompt. - Covers the new popup option, event plumbing, initial-message behavior, and disabled states in TUI tests. ## Problem Plan Mode already asks whether to implement an approved plan, but the only affirmative path continues in the same thread. That is useful when the planning conversation itself is still valuable, but it does not support the workflow where exploratory planning context is discarded and implementation starts from the final approved plan as the only model-visible handoff. <img width="1253" height="869" alt="image" src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/90023d75-c330-4919-bed8-518671c3474b" /> ## Mental model There are now two implementation choices after a proposed plan. The existing choice, `Yes, implement this plan`, is unchanged: it switches to Default mode and submits `Implement the plan.` in the current thread. The new choice, `Yes, clear context and implement`, treats the proposed plan as a handoff artifact. It clears the UI/session context through the same thread-start source used by `/clear`, then submits an initial prompt containing the approved plan after the fresh thread is configured. The important distinction is that the new path is not compaction. The model receives a deliberate implementation prompt built from the approved plan markdown, not a summary of the previous planning transcript. Both implementation choices require the Default collaboration preset to be available, so the popup does not offer a coding handoff when the fresh thread would fall back to another mode. ## Non-goals This change does not alter `/clear`, `/compact`, or the existing same-context Plan Mode implementation option. It does not add protocol surface area or app-server schema changes. It also does not carry the previous transcript path or a generated planning summary into the new model context. ## Tradeoffs The fresh-context option relies on the approved plan being sufficiently complete. That matches the Plan Mode contract, but it means vague plans will produce weaker implementation starts than a compacted transcript would. The upside is that rejected ideas, exploratory dead ends, and planning corrections do not leak into the implementation turn. The current implementation stores the latest proposed plan in `ChatWidget` rather than deriving it from history cells at selection time. This keeps the popup action simple and deterministic, but it makes the cache lifecycle important: it must be reset when a new task starts so an old plan cannot be submitted later. ## Architecture The TUI stores the most recent completed proposed-plan markdown when a plan item completes. The Plan Mode approval popup uses that cache to enable the fresh-context option and to build a first-turn prompt that instructs the model to implement the approved plan in a fresh context. Selecting the new option emits a TUI-internal `ClearUiAndSubmitUserMessage` event. `App` handles that event by reusing the existing clear flow: clear terminal state, reset app UI state, start a new app-server thread with `ThreadStartSource::Clear`, and attach a replacement `ChatWidget` with an initial user message. The existing initial-message suppression in `enqueue_primary_thread_session` ensures the prompt is submitted only after the new session is configured and any startup replay is rendered. ## Observability The previous thread remains resumable through the existing clear-session summary hint. There is no new telemetry or protocol event for this path, so debugging should start at the TUI event boundary: confirm the popup emitted `ClearUiAndSubmitUserMessage`, confirm the app-server thread start used `ThreadStartSource::Clear`, then confirm the fresh widget submitted the initial user message after `SessionConfigured`. ## Tests The Plan Mode popup snapshots cover the new option and preserve the original option as the first/default action. Unit coverage verifies the original same-context option still emits `SubmitUserMessageWithMode`, the new option emits `ClearUiAndSubmitUserMessage` with the approved plan embedded verbatim, and the clear-context option is disabled when Default mode is unavailable or no approved plan exists. The broader `codex-tui` test package passes with the updated fresh-thread initial-message plumbing.
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.