It edits files, runs shell commands, and integrates directly into your local workflow. Everything runs under version control, sandboxed, and limited to the directory you choose.

You can use it to:

• Refactor or clean up messy code

• Debug issues, write tests, and actually run them

• Set up migrations, batch rename files, and update imports

• Use repo markdown like codex.md for extra context

You provide your own OpenAI API key, and it works with any model exposed through the API, including o3 and o4-mini when they’re available.

Automation is configurable:

• Suggest: proposes changes, you approve

• Auto Edit: applies file edits automatically, asks before shell commands

• Full Auto: runs on its own, confined to your specified directory

Compared to Claude Code, Codex supports multimodal input like screenshots and diagrams, and it focuses more on actually executing code rather than just explaining it.

It’s fully open source which is genuinely nice to see.

Repo: github.com/openai/codex

Hi,

OpenAI released their Codex CLI. It brings an AI coding agent directly to your terminal.

Do you find it useful for shell-based tasks? What do you use it for?

Automating file edits or refactoring code snippets ?? Isn't it better to integrate an LLM with an IDE? Cursor, VS Code, Github Copilot etc etc.

I suppose it's useful if you automate tasks in your terminal. But it's only something I do occasionally, when I train models on cloud computers, I commit/pull code back and forth between my computer and the cloud instance via Github. Can you give me your use cases?

Thanks.