I started this PR because I wanted to share the `format_duration()`
utility function in `codex-rs/exec/src/event_processor.rs` with the TUI.
The question was: where to put it?
`core` should have as few dependencies as possible, so moving it there
would introduce a dependency on `chrono`, which seemed undesirable.
`core` already had this `cli` feature to deal with a similar situation
around sharing common utility functions, so I decided to:
* make `core` feature-free
* introduce `common`
* `common` can have as many "special interest" features as it needs,
each of which can declare their own deps
* the first two features of common are `cli` and `elapsed`
In practice, this meant updating a number of `Cargo.toml` files,
replacing this line:
```toml
codex-core = { path = "../core", features = ["cli"] }
```
with these:
```toml
codex-core = { path = "../core" }
codex-common = { path = "../common", features = ["cli"] }
```
Moving `format_duration()` into its own file gave it some "breathing
room" to add a unit test, so I had Codex generate some tests and new
support for durations over 1 minute.
This PR introduces an initial `McpClient` that we will use to give Codex
itself programmatic access to foreign MCPs. This does not wire it up in
Codex itself yet, but the new `mcp-client` crate includes a `main.rs`
for basic testing for now.
Manually tested by sending a `tools/list` request to Codex's own MCP
server:
```
codex-rs$ cargo build
codex-rs$ cargo run --bin codex-mcp-client ./target/debug/codex-mcp-server
{
"tools": [
{
"description": "Run a Codex session. Accepts configuration parameters matching the Codex Config struct.",
"inputSchema": {
"properties": {
"approval-policy": {
"description": "Execution approval policy expressed as the kebab-case variant name (`unless-allow-listed`, `auto-edit`, `on-failure`, `never`).",
"enum": [
"auto-edit",
"unless-allow-listed",
"on-failure",
"never"
],
"type": "string"
},
"cwd": {
"description": "Working directory for the session. If relative, it is resolved against the server process's current working directory.",
"type": "string"
},
"disable-response-storage": {
"description": "Disable server-side response storage.",
"type": "boolean"
},
"model": {
"description": "Optional override for the model name (e.g. \"o3\", \"o4-mini\")",
"type": "string"
},
"prompt": {
"description": "The *initial user prompt* to start the Codex conversation.",
"type": "string"
},
"sandbox-permissions": {
"description": "Sandbox permissions using the same string values accepted by the CLI (e.g. \"disk-write-cwd\", \"network-full-access\").",
"items": {
"enum": [
"disk-full-read-access",
"disk-write-cwd",
"disk-write-platform-user-temp-folder",
"disk-write-platform-global-temp-folder",
"disk-full-write-access",
"network-full-access"
],
"type": "string"
},
"type": "array"
}
},
"required": [
"prompt"
],
"type": "object"
},
"name": "codex"
}
]
}
```
This adds our own `mcp-types` crate to our Cargo workspace. We vendor in
the
[`2025-03-26/schema.json`](05f2045136/schema/2025-03-26/schema.json)
from the MCP repo and introduce a `generate_mcp_types.py` script to
codegen the `lib.rs` from the JSON schema.
Test coverage is currently light, but I plan to refine things as we
start making use of this crate.
And yes, I am aware that
https://github.com/modelcontextprotocol/rust-sdk exists, though the
published https://crates.io/crates/rmcp appears to be a competing
effort. While things are up in the air, it seems better for us to
control our own version of this code.
Incidentally, Codex did a lot of the work for this PR. I told it to
never edit `lib.rs` directly and instead to update
`generate_mcp_types.py` and then re-run it to update `lib.rs`. It
followed these instructions and once things were working end-to-end, I
iteratively asked for changes to the tests until the API looked
reasonable (and the code worked). Codex was responsible for figuring out
what to do to `generate_mcp_types.py` to achieve the requested test/API
changes.
For now, keep things simple such that we never update the `version` in
the `Cargo.toml` for the workspace root on the `main` branch. Instead,
create a new branch for a release, push one commit that updates the
`version`, and then tag that branch to kick off a release.
To test, I ran this script and created this release job:
https://github.com/openai/codex/actions/runs/14762580641
The generated DotSlash file has URLs that refer to
`https://github.com/openai/codex/releases/`, so let's set
`prerelease:false` (but keep `draft:true` for now) so those URLs should
work.
Also updated `version` in Cargo workspace so I will kick off a build
once this lands.
@oai-ragona and I discussed it, and we feel the REPL crate has served
its purpose, so we're going to delete the code and future archaeologists
can find it in Git history.
Apparently I made two key mistakes in
https://github.com/openai/codex/pull/740 (fixed in this PR):
* I forgot to redefine `$dest` in the `Stage Linux-only artifacts` step
* I did not define the `if` check correctly in the `Stage Linux-only
artifacts` step
This fixes both of those issues and bumps the workspace version to
`0.0.2504292006` in preparation for another release attempt.
This introduces a standalone executable that run the equivalent of the
`codex debug landlock` subcommand and updates `rust-release.yml` to
include it in the release.
The idea is that we will include this small binary with the TypeScript
CLI to provide support for Linux sandboxing.
Taking a pass at building artifacts per platform so we can consider
different distribution strategies that don't require users to install
the full `cargo` toolchain.
Right now this grabs just the `codex-repl` and `codex-tui` bins for 5
different targets and bundles them into a draft release. I think a
clearly marked pre-release set of artifacts will unblock the next step
of testing.
Originally, the `interactive` crate was going to be a placeholder for
building out a UX that was comparable to that of the existing TypeScript
CLI. Though after researching how Ratatui works, that seems difficult to
do because it is designed around the idea that it will redraw the full
screen buffer each time (and so any scrolling should be "internal" to
your Ratatui app) whereas the TypeScript CLI expects to render the full
history of the conversation every time(*) (which is why you can use your
terminal scrollbar to scroll it).
While it is possible to use Ratatui in a way that acts more like what
the TypeScript CLI is doing, it is awkward and seemingly results in
tedious code, so I think we should abandon that approach. As such, this
PR deletes the `interactive/` folder and the code that depended on it.
Further, since we added support for mousewheel scrolling in the TUI in
https://github.com/openai/codex/pull/641, it certainly feels much better
and the need for scroll support via the terminal scrollbar is greatly
diminished. This is now a more appropriate default UX for the
"multitool" CLI.
(*) Incidentally, I haven't verified this, but I think this results in
O(N^2) work in rendering, which seems potentially problematic for long
conversations.
As described in detail in `codex-rs/execpolicy/README.md` introduced in
this PR, `execpolicy` is a tool that lets you define a set of _patterns_
used to match [`execv(3)`](https://linux.die.net/man/3/execv)
invocations. When a pattern is matched, `execpolicy` returns the parsed
version in a structured form that is amenable to static analysis.
The primary use case is to define patterns match commands that should be
auto-approved by a tool such as Codex. This supports a richer pattern
matching mechanism that the sort of prefix-matching we have done to
date, e.g.:
5e40d9d221/codex-cli/src/approvals.ts (L333-L354)
Note we are still playing with the API and the `system_path` option in
particular still needs some work.
As stated in `codex-rs/README.md`:
Today, Codex CLI is written in TypeScript and requires Node.js 22+ to
run it. For a number of users, this runtime requirement inhibits
adoption: they would be better served by a standalone executable. As
maintainers, we want Codex to run efficiently in a wide range of
environments with minimal overhead. We also want to take advantage of
operating system-specific APIs to provide better sandboxing, where
possible.
To that end, we are moving forward with a Rust implementation of Codex
CLI contained in this folder, which has the following benefits:
- The CLI compiles to small, standalone, platform-specific binaries.
- Can make direct, native calls to
[seccomp](https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man2/seccomp.2.html) and
[landlock](https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man7/landlock.7.html) in
order to support sandboxing on Linux.
- No runtime garbage collection, resulting in lower memory consumption
and better, more predictable performance.
Currently, the Rust implementation is materially behind the TypeScript
implementation in functionality, so continue to use the TypeScript
implmentation for the time being. We will publish native executables via
GitHub Releases as soon as we feel the Rust version is usable.
