Codexist CLI (Rust Implementation)

We provide Codexist CLI as a standalone, native executable to ensure a zero-dependency install.

Installing Codexist

Today, the easiest way to install Codexist is via npm:

npm i -g @openai/codexist
codexist

You can also install via Homebrew (brew install --cask codexist) or download a platform-specific release directly from our GitHub Releases.

Documentation quickstart

• First run with Codexist? Follow the walkthrough in docs/getting-started.md for prompts, keyboard shortcuts, and session management.
• Already shipping with Codexist and want deeper control? Jump to docs/advanced.md and the configuration reference at docs/config.md.

What's new in the Rust CLI

The Rust implementation is now the maintained Codexist CLI and serves as the default experience. It includes a number of features that the legacy TypeScript CLI never supported.

Config

Codexist 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

Codexist CLI functions as an MCP client that allows the Codexist CLI and IDE extension to connect to MCP servers on startup. See the configuration documentation for details.

MCP server (experimental)

Codexist can be launched as an MCP server by running codexist mcp-server. This allows other MCP clients to use Codexist as a tool for another agent.

Use the @modelcontextprotocol/inspector to try it out:

npx @modelcontextprotocol/inspector codexist mcp-server

Use codexist mcp to add/list/get/remove MCP server launchers defined in config.toml, and codexist 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.

codexist exec to run Codexist programmatically/non-interactively

To run Codexist non-interactively, run codexist exec PROMPT (you can also pass the prompt via stdin) and Codexist 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.

Experimenting with the Codexist Sandbox

To test to see what happens when a command is run under the sandbox provided by Codexist, we provide the following subcommands in Codexist CLI:

# macOS
codexist sandbox macos [--full-auto] [--log-denials] [COMMAND]...

# Linux
codexist sandbox linux [--full-auto] [COMMAND]...

# Windows
codexist sandbox windows [--full-auto] [COMMAND]...

# Legacy aliases
codexist debug seatbelt [--full-auto] [--log-denials] [COMMAND]...
codexist 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 Codexist with the default, read-only sandbox
codexist --sandbox read-only

# Allow the agent to write within the current workspace while still blocking network access
codexist --sandbox workspace-write

# Danger! Disable sandboxing entirely (only do this if you are already running in a container or other isolated env)
codexist --sandbox danger-full-access

The same setting can be persisted in ~/.codexist/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 Codexist. Ultimately, we hope this to be a library crate that is generally useful for building other Rust/native applications that use Codexist.
• 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.