c3736cff0a
### Motivation
Today config.toml has three different OTEL knobs under `[otel]`:
- `exporter` controls where OTEL logs go
- `trace_exporter` controls where OTEL traces go
- `metrics_exporter` controls where metrics go
Those often (pretty much always?) serve different purposes.
For example, for OpenAI internal usage, the **log exporter** is already
being used for IT/security telemetry, and that use case is intentionally
content-rich: tool calls, arguments, outputs, MCP payloads, and in some
cases user content are all useful there. `log_user_prompt` is a good
example of that distinction. When it’s enabled, we include raw prompt
text in OTEL logs, which is acceptable for the security use case.
The **trace exporter** is a different story. The goal there is to give
OpenAI engineers visibility into latency and request behavior when they
run Codex locally, without sending sensitive prompt or tool data as
trace event data. In other words, traces should help answer “what was
slow?” or “where did time go?”, not “what did the user say?” or “what
did the tool return?”
The complication is that Rust’s `tracing` crate does not make a hard
distinction between “logs” and “trace events.” It gives us one
instrumentation API for logs and trace events (via `tracing::event!`),
and subscribers decide what gets treated as logs, trace events, or both.
Before this change, our OTEL trace layer was effectively attached to the
general tracing stream, which meant turning on `trace_exporter` could
pick up content-rich events that were originally written with logging
(and the `log_exporter`) in mind. That made it too easy for sensitive
data to end up in exported traces by accident.
### Concrete example
In `otel_manager.rs`, this `tracing::event!` call would be exported in
both logs AND traces (as a trace event).
```
pub fn user_prompt(&self, items: &[UserInput]) {
let prompt = items
.iter()
.flat_map(|item| match item {
UserInput::Text { text, .. } => Some(text.as_str()),
_ => None,
})
.collect::<String>();
let prompt_to_log = if self.metadata.log_user_prompts {
prompt.as_str()
} else {
"[REDACTED]"
};
tracing::event!(
tracing::Level::INFO,
event.name = "codex.user_prompt",
event.timestamp = %timestamp(),
// ...
prompt = %prompt_to_log,
);
}
```
Instead of `tracing::event!`, we should now be using `log_event!` and
`trace_event!` instead to more clearly indicate which sink (logs vs.
traces) that event should be exported to.
### What changed
This PR makes the log and trace export distinct instead of treating them
as two sinks for the same data.
On the provider side, OTEL logs and traces now have separate
routing/filtering policy. The log exporter keeps receiving the existing
`codex_otel` events, while trace export is limited to spans and trace
events.
On the event side, `OtelManager` now emits two flavors of telemetry
where needed:
- a log-only event with the current rich payloads
- a tracing-safe event with summaries only
It also has a convenience `log_and_trace_event!` macro for emitting to
both logs and traces when it's safe to do so, as well as log- and
trace-specific fields.
That means prompts, tool args, tool output, account email, MCP metadata,
and similar content stay in the log lane, while traces get the pieces
that are actually useful for performance work: durations, counts, sizes,
status, token counts, tool origin, and normalized error classes.
This preserves current IT/security logging behavior while making it safe
to turn on trace export for employees.
### Full list of things removed from trace export
- raw user prompt text from `codex.user_prompt`
- raw tool arguments and output from `codex.tool_result`
- MCP server metadata from `codex.tool_result` (mcp_server,
mcp_server_origin)
- account identity fields like `user.email` and `user.account_id` from
trace-safe OTEL events
- `host.name` from trace resources
- generic `codex.tool_decision` events from traces
- generic `codex.sse_event` events from traces
- the full ToolCall debug payload from the `handle_tool_call` span
What traces now keep instead is mostly:
- spans
- trace-safe OTEL events
- counts, lengths, durations, status, token counts, and tool origin
summaries
|
||
|---|---|---|
| .. | ||
| .cargo | ||
| .config | ||
| .github/workflows | ||
| ansi-escape | ||
| app-server | ||
| app-server-protocol | ||
| app-server-test-client | ||
| apply-patch | ||
| arg0 | ||
| artifacts | ||
| async-utils | ||
| backend-client | ||
| chatgpt | ||
| cli | ||
| cloud-requirements | ||
| cloud-tasks | ||
| cloud-tasks-client | ||
| codex-api | ||
| codex-backend-openapi-models | ||
| codex-client | ||
| codex-experimental-api-macros | ||
| config | ||
| core | ||
| debug-client | ||
| docs | ||
| exec | ||
| execpolicy | ||
| execpolicy-legacy | ||
| feedback | ||
| file-search | ||
| hooks | ||
| keyring-store | ||
| linux-sandbox | ||
| lmstudio | ||
| login | ||
| mcp-server | ||
| network-proxy | ||
| ollama | ||
| otel | ||
| package-manager | ||
| process-hardening | ||
| protocol | ||
| responses-api-proxy | ||
| rmcp-client | ||
| scripts | ||
| secrets | ||
| shell-command | ||
| shell-escalation | ||
| skills | ||
| state | ||
| stdio-to-uds | ||
| test-macros | ||
| tui | ||
| utils | ||
| vendor | ||
| windows-sandbox-rs | ||
| .gitignore | ||
| BUILD.bazel | ||
| Cargo.lock | ||
| Cargo.toml | ||
| clippy.toml | ||
| config.md | ||
| default.nix | ||
| deny.toml | ||
| node-version.txt | ||
| README.md | ||
| rust-toolchain.toml | ||
| rustfmt.toml | ||
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.