Files
codex/codex-rs
Owen Lin 1752f374a8 Improve codex remote-control CLI UX (#22878)
## Description

This PR makes `codex remote-control` behave like a foreground CLI
command by default. Running it now starts remote control, waits for
readiness, prints a clear status message with the machine name, and
stays alive until Ctrl-C.

Users who want daemon behavior can use `codex remote-control start`, and
`codex remote-control stop` now prints concise human-readable output.
`--json` remains available for scripts.

Implementation-wise, this now verifies the real app-server state instead
of just assuming startup worked. The CLI starts or connects to
app-server, probes its control socket, calls the `remoteControl/enable`
API, and waits for the remote-control status response/notification
before printing success.

For daemon mode, `codex remote-control start` also reports which managed
app-server binary was used, including its path and best-effort `codex
--version`, so failures are easier to diagnose.

## Examples

Example output:
```
> codex remote-control
Starting app-server with remote control enabled...
This machine is available for remote control as com-97826.
Press Ctrl-C to stop.
```

Error case using daemon (currently expected based on our publicly
released CLI version):
```
> ./target/debug/codex remote-control start
Starting app-server daemon with remote control enabled...
Error: app server did not become ready on /Users/owen/.codex/app-server-control/app-server-control.sock

Daemon used app-server:
  path: /Users/owen/.codex/packages/standalone/current/codex
  version: 0.130.0

Managed app-server stderr (/Users/owen/.codex/app-server-daemon/app-server.stderr.log):
  error: unexpected argument '--remote-control' found
  
  Usage: codex app-server [OPTIONS] [COMMAND]
  
  For more information, try '--help'.

Caused by:
    0: failed to connect to /Users/owen/.codex/app-server-control/app-server-control.sock
    1: No such file or directory (os error 2)
```

## What changed

- `codex remote-control` now runs remote control in the foreground and
prints a Ctrl-C stop hint.
- `codex remote-control start` starts the daemon and waits for remote
control readiness before reporting success.
- `codex remote-control stop` reports stopped/not-running status in
plain language.
- Startup failures now include recent managed app-server stderr to make
daemon issues easier to diagnose.
- Added coverage for CLI output, readiness waiting, foreground shutdown,
and stderr log tailing.
2026-05-18 13:39:02 -07:00
..
2026-05-18 19:25:27 +02:00
2026-05-18 13:32:21 +02:00

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

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 [--log-denials] [COMMAND]...

# Linux
codex sandbox linux [COMMAND]...

# Windows
codex sandbox windows [COMMAND]...

# Legacy aliases
codex debug seatbelt [--log-denials] [COMMAND]...
codex debug landlock [COMMAND]...

To try a writable legacy sandbox mode with these commands, pass an explicit config override such as -c 'sandbox_mode="workspace-write"'.

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 becomes 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.