What is the purpose of the "Approval presets" section?

Resolved 💬 2 comments Opened Sep 8, 2025 by DanKaplanSES Closed Sep 8, 2025

What is the type of issue?

Documentation is confusing

What is the issue?

The Approval Presets page says:

Codex provides three main Approval Presets: - Read Only: Codex can read files and answer questions; edits, running commands, and network access require approval. - Auto: Codex can read files, make edits, and run commands in the workspace without approval; asks for approval outside the workspace or for network access. - Full Access: Full disk and network access without prompts; extremely risky. You can further customize how Codex runs at the command line using the --ask-for-approval and --sandbox options.
  1. This information seems redundant to me, but I probably don't understand: --ask-for-approval and --sandbox are fully documented earlier.
  2. I don't understand how to set/use these presets, which one is default, or how they differ from the flags mentioned in the last sentence.
  3. The page doesn't use the word "preset" anywhere else.
  4. npx --yes @openai/codex@latest help | grep -i 'preset' doesn't find anything.

Should this section be removed?

Where did you find it?

https://github.com/openai/codex/blob/main/docs/config.md#approval-presets

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