Codex Chat

Codex Chat is an internal-first GPT-style web app backed by the Codex CLI. It provides a browser chat UI, login-gated access, persistent chat history, and a server-side bridge that can run Codex sessions for each user.

This repository contains the FastAPI backend, a lightweight static frontend, and deployment templates.

Features

• FastAPI backend with JSON API.
• Static browser chat UI served by the backend.
• Login-gated internal preview mode.
• Admin user management endpoints.
• Persistent users, tokens, and chat history in local JSON storage.
• Codex CLI bridge with resumable thread/session state.
• Optional per-user Linux sandbox provisioning.
• Optional Sub2API integration for user quota/concurrency management.
• Optional LLM Web API agent integration.
• Deployment templates for systemd and Nginx.

Repository Layout

.
├── app/
│   ├── config.py
│   ├── codex_runner.py
│   ├── llm_web_agent.py
│   ├── main.py
│   ├── models.py
│   ├── store.py
│   └── sub2api_client.py
├── frontend/
│   ├── index.html
│   ├── styles.css
│   └── app.js
├── deploy/
├── scripts/
├── .env.example
├── requirements.txt
└── run.py

Runtime directories are intentionally ignored:

• .env
• storage/
• workspaces/
• tools/
• .playwright-mcp/
• test-results/
• nextchat/

Requirements

• Python 3.11+
• Codex CLI
• Optional: Nginx and systemd for production deployment

Quick Start

Create and activate a virtual environment:

python3 -m venv .venv
. .venv/bin/activate
pip install -r requirements.txt

Create local configuration:

cp .env.example .env

Edit .env and set at least:

ADMIN_EMAIL=admin@example.com
ADMIN_PASSWORD=change-me-now
CODEX_BIN=codex
CODEX_MODEL=

Start the app:

python run.py

Open:

http://127.0.0.1:8787

Configuration

Important settings:

INTERNAL_ONLY=true
ALLOW_PUBLIC_SIGNUP=false
ADMIN_EMAIL=admin@example.com
ADMIN_PASSWORD=change-me-now
CODEX_BIN=codex
CODEX_WORKSPACE_ROOT=./workspaces
STORAGE_DIR=./storage

For a simple local demo, keep:

CODEX_RUN_AS_LINUX_USER=false

For a multi-user server deployment, review deploy/DEPLOY.md and scripts/provision-linux-users.sh before enabling per-user Linux sandboxes.

API Surface

Common endpoints:

• GET /api/config
• POST /api/auth/login
• POST /api/auth/logout
• GET /api/me
• GET /api/chat/sessions
• POST /api/chat/sessions
• GET /api/chat/sessions/{session_id}
• POST /api/chat/sessions/{session_id}/messages
• GET /api/admin/users
• PATCH /api/admin/users/{user_id}

The frontend uses bearer tokens returned by /api/auth/login.

Deployment

Production deployment templates live in deploy/:

• deploy/codex-chat.service
• deploy/nginx.example.conf

The deployment guide is in:

deploy/DEPLOY.md

Before using the templates on another machine, replace hardcoded paths, service users, and domains with your own values.

Development Notes

The backend keeps the implementation intentionally small and file-based. This is useful for internal previews, but a public deployment should replace JSON storage with a real database, add stronger audit logging, and harden user isolation.