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Last week, I thought I found the smoking gun in our flaky integration tests where holding these locks could have led to potential deadlock: - https://github.com/openai/codex/pull/2876 - https://github.com/openai/codex/pull/2878 Yet even after those PRs went in, we continued to see flakinees in our integration tests! Though with the additional logging added as part of debugging those tests, I now saw things like: ``` read message from stdout: Notification(JSONRPCNotification { jsonrpc: "2.0", method: "codex/event/exec_approval_request", params: Some(Object {"id": String("0"), "msg": Object {"type": String("exec_approval_request"), "call_id": String("call1"), "command": Array [String("python3"), String("-c"), String("print(42)")], "cwd": String("/tmp/.tmpFj2zwi/workdir")}, "conversationId": String("c67b32c5-9475-41bf-8680-f4b4834ebcc6")}) }) notification: Notification(JSONRPCNotification { jsonrpc: "2.0", method: "codex/event/exec_approval_request", params: Some(Object {"id": String("0"), "msg": Object {"type": String("exec_approval_request"), "call_id": String("call1"), "command": Array [String("python3"), String("-c"), String("print(42)")], "cwd": String("/tmp/.tmpFj2zwi/workdir")}, "conversationId": String("c67b32c5-9475-41bf-8680-f4b4834ebcc6")}) }) read message from stdout: Request(JSONRPCRequest { id: Integer(0), jsonrpc: "2.0", method: "execCommandApproval", params: Some(Object {"conversation_id": String("c67b32c5-9475-41bf-8680-f4b4834ebcc6"), "call_id": String("call1"), "command": Array [String("python3"), String("-c"), String("print(42)")], "cwd": String("/tmp/.tmpFj2zwi/workdir")}) }) writing message to stdin: Response(JSONRPCResponse { id: Integer(0), jsonrpc: "2.0", result: Object {"decision": String("approved")} }) in read_stream_until_notification_message(codex/event/task_complete) [mcp stderr] 2025-09-04T00:00:59.738585Z INFO codex_mcp_server::message_processor: <- response: JSONRPCResponse { id: Integer(0), jsonrpc: "2.0", result: Object {"decision": String("approved")} } [mcp stderr] 2025-09-04T00:00:59.738740Z DEBUG codex_core::codex: Submission sub=Submission { id: "1", op: ExecApproval { id: "0", decision: Approved } } [mcp stderr] 2025-09-04T00:00:59.738832Z WARN codex_core::codex: No pending approval found for sub_id: 0 ``` That is, a response was sent for a request, but no callback was in place to handle the response! This time, I think I may have found the underlying issue (though the fixes for holding locks for too long may have also been part of it), which is I found cases where we were sending the request:234c0a0469/codex-rs/core/src/codex.rs (L597)before inserting the `Sender` into the `pending_approvals` map (which has to wait on acquiring a mutex):234c0a0469/codex-rs/core/src/codex.rs (L598-L601)so it is possible the request could go out and the client could respond before `pending_approvals` was updated! Note this was happening in both `request_command_approval()` and `request_patch_approval()`, which maps to the sorts of errors we have been seeing when these integration tests have been flaking on us. While here, I am also adding some extra logging that prints if inserting into `pending_approvals` overwrites an entry as opposed to purely inserting one. Today, a conversation can have only one pending request at a time, but as we are planning to support parallel tool calls, this invariant may not continue to hold, in which case we need to revisit this abstraction.
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, though we plan to publish Codex to other package managers soon.
npm i -g @openai/codex@native
codex
You can also download a platform-specific release directly from our GitHub Releases.
What's new in the Rust CLI
While we are working to close the gap between the TypeScript and Rust implementations of Codex CLI, note that the Rust CLI has a number of features that the TypeScript CLI does not!
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
Codex CLI functions as an MCP client that can connect to MCP servers on startup. See the mcp_servers section in the configuration documentation for details.
It is still experimental, but you can also launch Codex as an MCP server by running codex mcp. Use the @modelcontextprotocol/inspector to try it out:
npx @modelcontextprotocol/inspector codex mcp
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.
codex exec to run Codex programmatially/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 @ for file search
Typing @ triggers a fuzzy-filename search over the workspace root. Use up/down to select among the results and Tab or Enter to replace the @ with the selected path. You can use Esc to cancel the search.
Esc–Esc to edit a previous message
When the chat composer is empty, press Esc to prime “backtrack” mode. Press Esc again to open a transcript preview highlighting the last user message; press Esc repeatedly to step to older user messages. Press Enter to confirm and Codex will fork the conversation from that point, trim the visible transcript accordingly, and pre‑fill the composer with the selected user message so you can edit and resubmit it.
In the transcript preview, the footer shows an Esc edit prev hint while editing is active.
--cd/-C flag
Sometimes it is not convenient to cd to the directory you want Codex to use as the "working root" before running Codex. Fortunately, codex supports a --cd option so you can specify whatever folder you want. You can confirm that Codex is honoring --cd by double-checking the workdir it reports in the TUI at the start of a new session.
Shell completions
Generate shell completion scripts via:
codex completion bash
codex completion zsh
codex completion fish
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 debug seatbelt [--full-auto] [COMMAND]...
# Linux
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".
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.