This introduces a new feature to Codex when it operates as an MCP
_client_ where if an MCP _server_ replies that it has an entry named
`"codex/sandbox-state"` in its _server capabilities_, then Codex will
send it an MCP notification with the following structure:
```json
{
"method": "codex/sandbox-state/update",
"params": {
"sandboxPolicy": {
"type": "workspace-write",
"network-access": false,
"exclude-tmpdir-env-var": false
"exclude-slash-tmp": false
},
"codexLinuxSandboxExe": null,
"sandboxCwd": "/Users/mbolin/code/codex2"
}
}
```
or with whatever values are appropriate for the initial `sandboxPolicy`.
**NOTE:** Codex _should_ continue to send the MCP server notifications
of the same format if these things change over the lifetime of the
thread, but that isn't wired up yet.
The result is that `shell-tool-mcp` can consume these values so that
when it calls `codex_core::exec::process_exec_tool_call()` in
`codex-rs/exec-server/src/posix/escalate_server.rs`, it is now sure to
call it with the correct values (whereas previously we relied on
hardcoded values).
While I would argue this is a supported use case within the MCP
protocol, the `rmcp` crate that we are using today does not support
custom notifications. As such, I had to patch it and I submitted it for
review, so hopefully it will be accepted in some form:
https://github.com/modelcontextprotocol/rust-sdk/pull/556
To test out this change from end-to-end:
- I ran `cargo build` in `~/code/codex2/codex-rs/exec-server`
- I built the fork of Bash in `~/code/bash/bash`
- I added the following to my `~/.codex/config.toml`:
```toml
# Use with `codex --disable shell_tool`.
[mcp_servers.execshell]
args = ["--bash", "/Users/mbolin/code/bash/bash"]
command = "/Users/mbolin/code/codex2/codex-rs/target/debug/codex-exec-mcp-server"
```
- From `~/code/codex2/codex-rs`, I ran `just codex --disable shell_tool`
- When the TUI started up, I verified that the sandbox mode is
`workspace-write`
- I ran `/mcp` to verify that the shell tool from the MCP is there:
<img width="1387" height="1400" alt="image"
src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/1a8addcc-5005-4e16-b59f-95cfd06fd4ab"
/>
- Then I asked it:
> what is the output of `gh issue list`
because this should be auto-approved with our existing dummy policy:
af63e6eccc/codex-rs/exec-server/src/posix.rs (L157-L164)
And it worked:
<img width="1387" height="1400" alt="image"
src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/7568d2f7-80da-4d68-86d0-c265a6f5e6c1"
/>
## 🐛 Problem
Users running commands with non-ASCII characters (like Russian text
"пример") in Windows/WSL environments experience garbled text in
VSCode's shell preview window, with Unicode replacement characters (�)
appearing instead of the actual text.
**Issue**: https://github.com/openai/codex/issues/6178
## 🔧 Root Cause
The issue was in `StreamOutput<Vec<u8>>::from_utf8_lossy()` method in
`codex-rs/core/src/exec.rs`, which used `String::from_utf8_lossy()` to
convert shell output bytes to strings. This function immediately
replaces any invalid UTF-8 byte sequences with replacement characters,
without attempting to decode using other common encodings.
In Windows/WSL environments, shell output often uses encodings like:
- Windows-1252 (common Windows encoding)
- Latin-1/ISO-8859-1 (extended ASCII)
## 🛠️ Solution
Replaced the simple `String::from_utf8_lossy()` call with intelligent
encoding detection via a new `bytes_to_string_smart()` function that
tries multiple encoding strategies:
1. **UTF-8** (fast path for valid UTF-8)
2. **Windows-1252** (handles Windows-specific characters in 0x80-0x9F
range)
3. **Latin-1** (fallback for extended ASCII)
4. **Lossy UTF-8** (final fallback, same as before)
## 📁 Changes
### New Files
- `codex-rs/core/src/text_encoding.rs` - Smart encoding detection module
- `codex-rs/core/tests/suite/text_encoding_fix.rs` - Integration tests
### Modified Files
- `codex-rs/core/src/lib.rs` - Added text_encoding module
- `codex-rs/core/src/exec.rs` - Updated StreamOutput::from_utf8_lossy()
- `codex-rs/core/tests/suite/mod.rs` - Registered new test module
## ✅ Testing
- **5 unit tests** covering UTF-8, Windows-1252, Latin-1, and fallback
scenarios
- **2 integration tests** simulating the exact Issue #6178 scenario
- **Demonstrates improvement** over the previous
`String::from_utf8_lossy()` approach
All tests pass:
```bash
cargo test -p codex-core text_encoding
cargo test -p codex-core test_shell_output_encoding_issue_6178
```
## 🎯 Impact
- ✅ **Eliminates garbled text** in VSCode shell preview for non-ASCII
content
- ✅ **Supports Windows/WSL environments** with proper encoding detection
- ✅ **Zero performance impact** for UTF-8 text (fast path)
- ✅ **Backward compatible** - UTF-8 content works exactly as before
- ✅ **Handles edge cases** with robust fallback mechanism
## 🧪 Test Scenarios
The fix has been tested with:
- Russian text ("пример")
- Windows-1252 quotation marks (""test")
- Latin-1 accented characters ("café")
- Mixed encoding content
- Invalid byte sequences (graceful fallback)
## 📋 Checklist
- [X] Addresses the reported issue
- [X] Includes comprehensive tests
- [X] Maintains backward compatibility
- [X] Follows project coding conventions
- [X] No breaking changes
---------
Co-authored-by: Josh McKinney <joshka@openai.com>
This PR threads execpolicy2 into codex-core.
activated via feature flag: exec_policy (on by default)
reads and parses all .codexpolicy files in `codex_home/codex`
refactored tool runtime API to integrate execpolicy logic
---------
Co-authored-by: Michael Bolin <mbolin@openai.com>
## Summary
Enables shell_command for windows users, and starts adding some basic
command parsing here, to at least remove powershell prefixes. We'll
follow this up with command parsing but I wanted to land this change
separately with some basic UX.
**NOTE**: This implementation parses bash and powershell on both
platforms. In theory this is possible, since you can use git bash on
windows or powershell on linux. In practice, this may not be worth the
complexity of supporting, so I don't feel strongly about the current
approach vs. platform-specific branching.
## Testing
- [x] Added a bunch of tests
- [x] Ran on both windows and os x
## Overview
Adds LM Studio OSS support. Closes#1883
### Changes
This PR enhances the behavior of `--oss` flag to support LM Studio as a
provider. Additionally, it introduces a new flag`--local-provider` which
can take in `lmstudio` or `ollama` as values if the user wants to
explicitly choose which one to use.
If no provider is specified `codex --oss` will auto-select the provider
based on whichever is running.
#### Additional enhancements
The default can be set using `oss-provider` in config like:
```
oss_provider = "lmstudio"
```
For non-interactive users, they will need to either provide the provider
as an arg or have it in their `config.toml`
### Notes
For best performance, [set the default context
length](https://lmstudio.ai/docs/app/advanced/per-model) for gpt-oss to
the maximum your machine can support
---------
Co-authored-by: Matt Clayton <matt@lmstudio.ai>
Co-authored-by: Eric Traut <etraut@openai.com>
Implements:
```
thread/list
thread/start
thread/resume
thread/archive
```
along with their integration tests. These are relatively light wrappers
around the existing core logic, and changes to core logic are minimal.
However, an improvement made for developer ergonomics:
- `thread/start` and `thread/resume` automatically attaches a
conversation listener internally, so clients don't have to make a
separate `AddConversationListener` call like they do today.
For consistency, also updated `model/list` and `feedback/upload` (naming
conventions, list API params).
This is just a refactor of `conversation_history` file by breaking it up
into multiple smaller ones with helper. This refactor will help us move
more functionality related to context management here. in a clean way.
In this PR, I am exploring migrating task kind to an invocation of
Codex. The main reason would be getting rid off multiple
`ConversationHistory` state and streamlining our context/history
management.
This approach depends on opening a channel between the sub-codex and
codex. This channel is responsible for forwarding `interactive`
(`approvals`) and `non-interactive` events. The `task` is responsible
for handling those events.
This opens the door for implementing `codex as a tool`, replacing
`compact` and `review`, and potentially subagents.
One consideration is this code is very similar to `app-server` specially
in the approval part. If in the future we wanted an interactive
`sub-codex` we should consider using `codex-mcp`
This adds an RPC to the app server to the the `ConversationSummary` via
a rollout path. Now that the VS Code extension supports showing the
Codex UI in an editor panel where the URI of the panel maps to the
rollout file, we need to be able to get the `ConversationSummary` from
the rollout file directly.
Currently we collect all all turn items in a vector, then we add it to
the history on success. This result in losing those items on errors
including aborting `ctrl+c`.
This PR:
- Adds the ability for the tool call to handle cancellation
- bubble the turn items up to where we are recording this info
Admittedly, this logic is an ad-hoc logic that doesn't handle a lot of
error edge cases. The right thing to do is recording to the history on
the spot as `items`/`tool calls output` come. However, this isn't
possible because of having different `task_kind` that has different
`conversation_histories`. The `try_run_turn` has no idea what thread are
we using. We cannot also pass an `arc` to the `conversation_histories`
because it's a private element of `state`.
That's said, `abort` is the most common case and we should cover it
until we remove `task kind`
1. Adds AgentMessage, Reasoning, WebSearch items.
2. Switches the ResponseItem parsing to use new items and then also emit
3. Removes user-item kind and filters out "special" (environment) user
items when returning to clients.
Add proper feature flag instead of having custom flags for everything.
This is just for experimental/wip part of the code
It can be used through CLI:
```bash
codex --enable unified_exec --disable view_image_tool
```
Or in the `config.toml`
```toml
# Global toggles applied to every profile unless overridden.
[features]
apply_patch_freeform = true
view_image_tool = false
```
Follow-up:
In a following PR, the goal is to have a default have `bundles` of
features that we can associate to a model
This adds a queryable auth status for MCP servers which is useful:
1. To determine whether a streamable HTTP server supports auth or not
based on whether or not it supports RFC 8414-3.2
2. Allow us to build a better user experience on top of MCP status
## Summary
- Factor `load_config_as_toml` into `core::config_loader` so config
loading is reusable across callers.
- Layer `~/.codex/config.toml`, optional `~/.codex/managed_config.toml`,
and macOS managed preferences (base64) with recursive table merging and
scoped threads per source.
## Config Flow
```
Managed prefs (macOS profile: com.openai.codex/config_toml_base64)
▲
│
~/.codex/managed_config.toml │ (optional file-based override)
▲
│
~/.codex/config.toml (user-defined settings)
```
- The loader searches under the resolved `CODEX_HOME` directory
(defaults to `~/.codex`).
- Managed configs let administrators ship fleet-wide overrides via
device profiles which is useful for enforcing certain settings like
sandbox or approval defaults.
- For nested hash tables: overlays merge recursively. Child tables are
merged key-by-key, while scalar or array values replace the prior layer
entirely. This lets admins add or tweak individual fields without
clobbering unrelated user settings.
# Tool System Refactor
- Centralizes tool definitions and execution in `core/src/tools/*`:
specs (`spec.rs`), handlers (`handlers/*`), router (`router.rs`),
registry/dispatch (`registry.rs`), and shared context (`context.rs`).
One registry now builds the model-visible tool list and binds handlers.
- Router converts model responses to tool calls; Registry dispatches
with consistent telemetry via `codex-rs/otel` and unified error
handling. Function, Local Shell, MCP, and experimental `unified_exec`
all flow through this path; legacy shell aliases still work.
- Rationale: reduce per‑tool boilerplate, keep spec/handler in sync, and
make adding tools predictable and testable.
Example: `read_file`
- Spec: `core/src/tools/spec.rs` (see `create_read_file_tool`,
registered by `build_specs`).
- Handler: `core/src/tools/handlers/read_file.rs` (absolute `file_path`,
1‑indexed `offset`, `limit`, `L#: ` prefixes, safe truncation).
- E2E test: `core/tests/suite/read_file.rs` validates the tool returns
the requested lines.
## Next steps:
- Decompose `handle_container_exec_with_params`
- Add parallel tool calls
# Extract and Centralize Sandboxing
- Goal: Improve safety and clarity by centralizing sandbox planning and
execution.
- Approach:
- Add planner (ExecPlan) and backend registry (Direct/Seatbelt/Linux)
with run_with_plan.
- Refactor codex.rs to plan-then-execute; handle failures/escalation via
the plan.
- Delegate apply_patch to the codex binary and run it with an empty env
for determinism.
### Title
## otel
Codex can emit [OpenTelemetry](https://opentelemetry.io/) **log events**
that
describe each run: outbound API requests, streamed responses, user
input,
tool-approval decisions, and the result of every tool invocation. Export
is
**disabled by default** so local runs remain self-contained. Opt in by
adding an
`[otel]` table and choosing an exporter.
```toml
[otel]
environment = "staging" # defaults to "dev"
exporter = "none" # defaults to "none"; set to otlp-http or otlp-grpc to send events
log_user_prompt = false # defaults to false; redact prompt text unless explicitly enabled
```
Codex tags every exported event with `service.name = "codex-cli"`, the
CLI
version, and an `env` attribute so downstream collectors can distinguish
dev/staging/prod traffic. Only telemetry produced inside the
`codex_otel`
crate—the events listed below—is forwarded to the exporter.
### Event catalog
Every event shares a common set of metadata fields: `event.timestamp`,
`conversation.id`, `app.version`, `auth_mode` (when available),
`user.account_id` (when available), `terminal.type`, `model`, and
`slug`.
With OTEL enabled Codex emits the following event types (in addition to
the
metadata above):
- `codex.api_request`
- `cf_ray` (optional)
- `attempt`
- `duration_ms`
- `http.response.status_code` (optional)
- `error.message` (failures)
- `codex.sse_event`
- `event.kind`
- `duration_ms`
- `error.message` (failures)
- `input_token_count` (completion only)
- `output_token_count` (completion only)
- `cached_token_count` (completion only, optional)
- `reasoning_token_count` (completion only, optional)
- `tool_token_count` (completion only)
- `codex.user_prompt`
- `prompt_length`
- `prompt` (redacted unless `log_user_prompt = true`)
- `codex.tool_decision`
- `tool_name`
- `call_id`
- `decision` (`approved`, `approved_for_session`, `denied`, or `abort`)
- `source` (`config` or `user`)
- `codex.tool_result`
- `tool_name`
- `call_id`
- `arguments`
- `duration_ms` (execution time for the tool)
- `success` (`"true"` or `"false"`)
- `output`
### Choosing an exporter
Set `otel.exporter` to control where events go:
- `none` – leaves instrumentation active but skips exporting. This is
the
default.
- `otlp-http` – posts OTLP log records to an OTLP/HTTP collector.
Specify the
endpoint, protocol, and headers your collector expects:
```toml
[otel]
exporter = { otlp-http = {
endpoint = "https://otel.example.com/v1/logs",
protocol = "binary",
headers = { "x-otlp-api-key" = "${OTLP_TOKEN}" }
}}
```
- `otlp-grpc` – streams OTLP log records over gRPC. Provide the endpoint
and any
metadata headers:
```toml
[otel]
exporter = { otlp-grpc = {
endpoint = "https://otel.example.com:4317",
headers = { "x-otlp-meta" = "abc123" }
}}
```
If the exporter is `none` nothing is written anywhere; otherwise you
must run or point to your
own collector. All exporters run on a background batch worker that is
flushed on
shutdown.
If you build Codex from source the OTEL crate is still behind an `otel`
feature
flag; the official prebuilt binaries ship with the feature enabled. When
the
feature is disabled the telemetry hooks become no-ops so the CLI
continues to
function without the extra dependencies.
---------
Co-authored-by: Anton Panasenko <apanasenko@openai.com>
Extracting tasks in a module and start abstraction behind a Trait (more
to come on this but each task will be tackled in a dedicated PR)
The goal was to drop the ActiveTask and to have a (potentially) set of
tasks during each turn
## Current State Observations
- `Session` currently holds many unrelated responsibilities (history,
approval queues, task handles, rollout recorder, shell discovery, token
tracking, etc.), making it hard to reason about ownership and lifetimes.
- The anonymous `State` struct inside `codex.rs` mixes session-long data
with turn-scoped queues and approval bookkeeping.
- Turn execution (`run_task`) relies on ad-hoc local variables that
should conceptually belong to a per-turn state object.
- External modules (`codex::compact`, tests) frequently poke the raw
`Session.state` mutex, which couples them to implementation details.
- Interrupts, approvals, and rollout persistence all have bespoke
cleanup paths, contributing to subtle bugs when a turn is aborted
mid-flight.
## Desired End State
- Keep a slim `Session` object that acts as the orchestrator and façade.
It should expose a focused API (submit, approvals, interrupts, event
emission) without storing unrelated fields directly.
- Introduce a `state` module that encapsulates all mutable data
structures:
- `SessionState`: session-persistent data (history, approved commands,
token/rate-limit info, maybe user preferences).
- `ActiveTurn`: metadata for the currently running turn (sub-id, task
kind, abort handle) and an `Arc<TurnState>`.
- `TurnState`: all turn-scoped pieces (pending inputs, approval waiters,
diff tracker, review history, auto-compact flags, last agent message,
outstanding tool call bookkeeping).
- Group long-lived helpers/managers into a dedicated `SessionServices`
struct so `Session` does not accumulate "random" fields.
- Provide clear, lock-safe APIs so other modules never touch raw
mutexes.
- Ensure every turn creates/drops a `TurnState` and that
interrupts/finishes delegate cleanup to it.
refactors command_safety files into its own package, so we can add
platform-specific ones
Also creates a windows-specific of `is_known_safe_command` that just
returns false always, since that is what happens today.
Proposal: We want to record a dev message like so:
```
{
"type": "message",
"role": "user",
"content": [
{
"type": "input_text",
"text": "<user_action>
<context>User initiated a review task. Here's the full review output from reviewer model. User may select one or more comments to resolve.</context>
<action>review</action>
<results>
{findings_str}
</results>
</user_action>"
}
]
},
```
Without showing in the chat transcript.
Rough idea, but it fixes issue where the user finishes a review thread,
and asks the parent "fix the rest of the review issues" thinking that
the parent knows about it.
### Question: Why not a tool call?
Because the agent didn't make the call, it was a human. + we haven't
implemented sub-agents yet, and we'll need to think about the way we
represent these human-led tool calls for the agent.
1. Adds the environment prompt (including cwd) to review thread
2. Prepends the review prompt as a user message (temporary fix so the
instructions are not replaced on backend)
3. Sets reasoning to low
4. Sets default review model to `gpt-5-codex`
Adding the ability to resume conversations.
we have one verb `resume`.
Behavior:
`tui`:
`codex resume`: opens session picker
`codex resume --last`: continue last message
`codex resume <session id>`: continue conversation with `session id`
`exec`:
`codex resume --last`: continue last conversation
`codex resume <session id>`: continue conversation with `session id`
Implementation:
- I added a function to find the path in `~/.codex/sessions/` with a
`UUID`. This is helpful in resuming with session id.
- Added the above mentioned flags
- Added lots of testing
## Unified PTY-Based Exec Tool
Note: this requires to have this flag in the config:
`use_experimental_unified_exec_tool=true`
- Adds a PTY-backed interactive exec feature (“unified_exec”) with
session reuse via
session_id, bounded output (128 KiB), and timeout clamping (≤ 60 s).
- Protocol: introduces ResponseItem::UnifiedExec { session_id,
arguments, timeout_ms }.
- Tools: exposes unified_exec as a function tool (Responses API);
excluded from Chat
Completions payload while still supported in tool lists.
- Path handling: resolves commands via PATH (or explicit paths), with
UTF‑8/newline‑aware
truncation (truncate_middle).
- Tests: cover command parsing, path resolution, session
persistence/cleanup, multi‑session
isolation, timeouts, and truncation behavior.
This commit adds a re-export for InitialHistory from the internal
conversation_manager module in codex-core's lib.rs.
The `RolloutRecorder::get_rollout_history` method (exposed via `pub use
rollout::RolloutRecorder;`, already present in lib.rs) returns an
`InitialHistory` type, which is defined in the private
conversation_manager module. Without this re-export, consumers of the
public RolloutRecorder API would not be able to directly use the return
type, as they cannot access the private module. This would result in an
inconvenient experience where the method's return value cannot be
handled without additional, non-obvious imports.
By adding `pub use conversation_manager::InitialHistory;`, we make
InitialHistory available as `codex_core::InitialHistory`, improving API
ergonomics for users of the rollout functionality while keeping the
conversation_manager module internal.
No functional changes are made; this is a pure re-export for better
usability.
Signed-off-by: M4n5ter <m4n5terrr@gmail.com>
Adds support for `ArchiveConversation` in the JSON-RPC server that takes
a `(ConversationId, PathBuf)` pair and:
- verifies the `ConversationId` corresponds to the rollout id at the
`PathBuf`
- if so, invokes
`ConversationManager.remove_conversation(ConversationId)`
- if the `CodexConversation` was in memory, send `Shutdown` and wait for
`ShutdownComplete` with a timeout
- moves the `.jsonl` file to `$CODEX_HOME/archived_sessions`
---------
Co-authored-by: Gabriel Peal <gabriel@openai.com>
This PR does multiple things that are necessary for conversation resume
to work from the extension. I wanted to make sure everything worked so
these changes wound up in one PR:
1. Generate more ts types
2. Resume rollout history files rather than create a new one every time
it is resumed so you don't see a duplicate conversation in history for
every resume. Chatted with @aibrahim-oai to verify this
3. Return conversation_id in conversation summaries
4. [Cleanup] Use serde and strong types for a lot of the rollout file
parsing
i'm not yet convinced i have the best heuristics for what to highlight,
but this feels like a useful step towards something a bit easier to
read, esp. when the model is producing large commands.
<img width="669" height="589" alt="Screenshot 2025-09-03 at 8 21 56 PM"
src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/b9cbcc43-80e8-4d41-93c8-daa74b84b331"
/>
also a fairly significant refactor of our line wrapping logic.
Adds a TUI resume flow with an interactive picker and quick resume.
- CLI:
- --resume / -r: open picker to resume a prior session
- --continue / -l: resume the most recent session (no picker)
- Behavior on resume: initial history is replayed, welcome banner
hidden, and the first redraw is suppressed to avoid flicker.
- Implementation:
- New tui/src/resume_picker.rs (paginated listing via
RolloutRecorder::list_conversations)
- App::run accepts ResumeSelection; resumes from disk when requested
- ChatWidget refactor with ChatWidgetInit and new_from_existing; replays
initial messages
- Tests: cover picker sorting/preview extraction and resumed-history
rendering.
- Docs: getting-started updated with flags and picker usage.
https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/1bb6469b-e5d1-42f6-bec6-b1ae6debda3b
This PR does the following:
- divides user msgs into 3 categories: plain, user instructions, and
environment context
- Centralizes adding user instructions and environment context to a
degree
- Improve the integration testing
Building on top of #3123
Specifically this
[comment](https://github.com/openai/codex/pull/3123#discussion_r2319885089).
We need to send the user message while ignoring the User Instructions
and Environment Context we attach.
### Overview
This PR introduces the following changes:
1. Adds a unified mechanism to convert ResponseItem into EventMsg.
2. Ensures that when a session is initialized with initial history, a
vector of EventMsg is sent along with the session configuration. This
allows clients to re-render the UI accordingly.
3. Added integration testing
### Caveats
This implementation does not send every EventMsg that was previously
dispatched to clients. The excluded events fall into two categories:
• “Arguably” rolled-out events
Examples include tool calls and apply-patch calls. While these events
are conceptually rolled out, we currently only roll out ResponseItems.
These events are already being handled elsewhere and transformed into
EventMsg before being sent.
• Non-rolled-out events
Certain events such as TurnDiff, Error, and TokenCount are not rolled
out at all.
### Future Directions
At present, resuming a session involves maintaining two states:
• UI State
Clients can replay most of the important UI from the provided EventMsg
history.
• Model State
The model receives the complete session history to reconstruct its
internal state.
This design provides a solid foundation. If, in the future, more precise
UI reconstruction is needed, we have two potential paths:
1. Introduce a third data structure that allows us to derive both
ResponseItems and EventMsgs.
2. Clearly divide responsibilities: the core system ensures the
integrity of the model state, while clients are responsible for
reconstructing the UI.
