codex app: open source?

Resolved 💬 6 comments Opened Feb 5, 2026 by VitalyAnkh Closed Feb 5, 2026
💡 Likely answer: A maintainer (etraut-openai, contributor) responded on this thread — see the highlighted reply below.

What version of the Codex App are you using (From “About Codex” dialog)?

NA

What subscription do you have?

Plus

What issue are you seeing?

The codex-cli and the Codex VS Code extension being open source is hugely appreciated. It’s rare and helpful to see how a production-grade coding agent is built and shipped at scale. I noticed the updated contribution guide limits PRs from outside OpenAI, but the ability to read the code and join the discussion is still incredibly valuable.

Personally, I love using the Rust-written codex-cli, and I really appreciate the Codex team’s technical taste. At the same time, the real moat is the GPT model itself. Open-sourcing more of the agent/UI layer wouldn’t meaningfully undermine OpenAI’s competitiveness, if anything, it could bring more community feedback and faster iteration.

With that in mind, would you consider open-sourcing the Codex App as well? From the outside, it's just a Electron codex-cli wrapper, and open-sourcing it would offer the same kind of learning and community feedback.

What steps can reproduce the bug?

NA

What is the expected behavior?

Codex App is open source.

Additional information

_No response_

View original on GitHub ↗

6 Comments

etraut-openai contributor · 6 months ago

We don't have any plans to open source the app at this time.

The app is built upon the "app server" interface in the open-source Codex code base in Rust. You can read about the app server interface in this blog post which the Codex team just published.

TomasHubelbauer · 3 months ago

Hopefully you'll reconsider, open sourcing this app would provider users with the ability to customize it beyond its current extensibility points and bridge the gap of currently missing features.

lindsayad · 1 month ago

Is the vs code extension open source?

simuleite · 24 days ago
We don't have any plans to open source the app at this time. The app is built upon the "app server" interface in the open-source Codex code base in Rust. You can read about the app server interface in this blog post which the Codex team just published.

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Hi, I noticed that Desktop doesn't have the Ctrl+G function to invoke the EDITOR, and the input box cannot be Full Screen; this is not friendly for long Prompts. Is this by design?

TomasHubelbauer · 3 days ago

@etraut-openai does anything change with the port over to the ChatGPT Desktop app which as I understand it is not a native Rust UI but Electron?

m-ar-c · 2 days ago
Hopefully you'll reconsider, open sourcing this app would provider users with the ability to customize it beyond its current extensibility points and bridge the gap of currently missing features.

Open sourcing could also mean giving users the ability to use the app, period. For many, including me, making closed-source software a central part of one’s toolkit and workflow is a big no. Features matter, but freedom and transparency matter more.