Celia Chen
f55f5c258f
## Summary Fix a managed ChatGPT auth bug where a stale Codex process could proactively refresh using an old in-memory refresh token even after another process had already rotated auth on disk. This changes the proactive `AuthManager::auth()` path to reuse the existing guarded `refresh_token()` flow instead of calling the refresh endpoint directly from cached auth state. ## Original Issue Users reported repeated `codexd` log lines like: ```text ERROR codex_core::auth: Failed to refresh token: error sending request for url (https://auth.openai.com/oauth/token) ``` In practice this showed up most often when multiple `codexd` processes were left running. Killing the extra processes stopped the noise, which suggested the issue was caused by stale auth state across processes rather than invalid user credentials. ## Diagnosis The bug was in the proactive refresh path used by `AuthManager::auth()`: - Process A could refresh successfully, rotate refresh token `R0` to `R1`, and persist the updated auth state plus `last_refresh` to disk. - Process B could keep an older auth snapshot cached in memory, still holding `R0` and the old `last_refresh`. - Later, when Process B called `auth()`, it checked staleness from its cached in-memory auth instead of first reloading from disk. - Because that cached `last_refresh` was stale, Process B would proactively call `/oauth/token` with stale refresh token `R0`. - On failure, `auth()` logged the refresh error but kept returning the same stale cached auth, so repeated `auth()` calls could keep retrying with dead state. This differed from the existing unauthorized-recovery flow, which already did the safer thing: guarded reload from disk first, then refresh only if the on-disk auth was unchanged. ## What Changed - Switched proactive refresh in `AuthManager::auth()` to: - do a pure staleness check on cached auth - call `refresh_token()` when stale - return the original cached auth on genuine refresh failure, preserving existing outward behavior - Removed the direct proactive refresh-from-cached-state path - Added regression tests covering: - stale cached auth with newer same-account auth already on disk - the same scenario even when the refresh endpoint would fail if called ## Why This Fix `refresh_token()` already contains the right cross-process safety behavior: - guarded reload from disk - same-account verification - skip-refresh when another process already changed auth Reusing that path makes proactive refresh consistent with unauthorized recovery and prevents stale processes from trying to refresh already-rotated tokens. ## Testing Test shape: - create a fresh temp `CODEX_HOME` from `~/.codex/auth.json` - force `last_refresh` to an old timestamp so proactive refresh is required - start two long-lived helper processes against the same auth file - start `B` first so it caches stale auth and sleeps - start `A` second so it refreshes first - point both at a local mock `/oauth/token` server - inspect whether `B` makes a second refresh request with the stale in-memory token, or reloads the rotated token from disk ### Before the fix The repro showed the bug clearly: the mock server saw two refreshes with the same stale token, `A` rotated to a new token, and `B` still returned the stale token instead of reloading from disk. ```text POST /oauth/token refresh_token=rt_j6s0... POST /oauth/token refresh_token=rt_j6s0... B:cached_before=rt_j6s0... B:cached_after=rt_j6s0... B:returned=rt_j6s0... A:cached_before=rt_j6s0... A:cached_after=rotated-refresh-token-logged-run-v2 A:returned=rotated-refresh-token-logged-run-v2 ``` ### After the fix After the fix, the mock server saw only one refresh request. `A` refreshed once, and `B` started with the stale token but reloaded and returned the rotated token. ```text POST /oauth/token refresh_token=rt_j6s0... B:cached_before=rt_j6s0... B:cached_after=rotated-refresh-token-fix-branch B:returned=rotated-refresh-token-fix-branch A:cached_before=rt_j6s0... A:cached_after=rotated-refresh-token-fix-branch A:returned=rotated-refresh-token-fix-branch ``` This shows the new behavior: `A` refreshes once, then `B` reuses the updated auth from disk instead of making a second refresh request with the stale token.
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.