Codex Office

See your local Codex sessions and subagents — privately, inside VS Code.

Codex Office is a local-first, read-only VS Code sidebar that organizes Codex sessions and nested subagents into an animated office. It shows only bounded session metadata and never sends your Codex data to an external service.

Start in three steps

1. Install Codex Office from the Visual Studio Marketplace.
2. Open a folder or workspace in VS Code.
3. Select Codex Office in the Activity Bar.

The default view discovers persisted Codex sessions for the open workspace. It does not require experimental settings, and sessions without a current status are labelled Unreported instead of being guessed.

What you can see

Codex Office intentionally does not show prompts, responses, commands, file contents, workspace paths, costs, or per-agent token totals.

Compatibility

• VS Code ^1.96.0 or later is required.
• Persisted workspace inventory accepts a well-formed Codex runtime only after every response used by the extension passes strict, bounded validation.
• Canonical prerelease runtimes may use that inventory fallback, but are never treated as verified for live status.
• Codex CLI 0.146.0 is the currently schema-verified runtime.
• Experimental Shared observer live status remains limited to verified Codex 0.146.0. Other compatible versions fall back to persisted inventory and show status as Unreported.
• Codex CLI and the Codex bundled with a desktop app can have different versions.

Check the Codex CLI visible in your terminal:

codex --version

On macOS, also check the retained desktop compatibility bundle when present:

/Applications/ChatGPT.app/Contents/Resources/codex --version
/Applications/Codex.app/Contents/Resources/codex --version

Optional live status

Persisted inventory is the safe default. To try basic live status, enable Codex Office › Experimental Shared App Server, ensure the verified local Codex daemon is already running, and reload VS Code.

The extension never starts, stops, configures, or controls that daemon. If its version, socket, permissions, or bounded responses cannot be verified, Codex Office falls back to persisted inventory instead of reading more data.

Troubleshooting

Codex Office shows only Unreported

This is expected for persisted sessions that are not loaded in the verified Shared observer. The hierarchy is still available; only live status is absent.

Codex runtime could not be verified

Check for multiple installations. Codex Office prefers user-local executables before the VS Code PATH and application bundles.

macOS or Linux:

codex --version
command -v codex
which -a codex

Windows PowerShell:

codex --version
Get-Command codex -All | Select-Object Source

After updating or changing Codex, close running Codex desktop processes and use Developer: Reload Window in VS Code.

No sessions appear

• Open the same workspace folder used by the Codex sessions.
• Confirm Codex is installed and available locally.
• Run Codex Office: Refresh from the Command Palette.
• Open View → Output → Codex Office for bounded lifecycle diagnostics.

Privacy and safety

• Local only: no telemetry, remote persistence, or extension-owned network calls.
• Read only: no prompting, steering, stopping, resuming, or mutating agents.
• Content blind: prompts, responses, commands, turns, files, and paths are discarded at the provider boundary.
• Fail safe: malformed or incompatible data keeps the last safe snapshot or degrades without exposing raw provider content.
• Accessible: keyboard navigation, non-color status cues, high contrast, and reduced motion are release requirements.

See SECURITY.md and the privacy requirements for the complete policy.

Current limitations

• Live status is basic lifecycle state, not tool-level activity.
• The Shared observer is experimental and version-verified separately from persisted inventory.
• Per-agent token usage is intentionally unavailable.
• Codex Office requires an open workspace and does not show global sessions.

Install a reviewed VSIX

In VS Code, choose Extensions: Install from VSIX…, select the reviewed release artifact, and open Codex Office from the Activity Bar.

Develop locally

corepack enable
pnpm install
pnpm check
pnpm dev

Keep pnpm dev running, then press F5 and choose Run Codex Office Extension. The development host starts without a workspace; use File → Open Folder… there when testing workspace-scoped discovery.

Documentation

• Vision
• CDD contracts
• Architecture
• UI/UX specification
• Development workflow
• Marketplace publishing
• Agent operating model

Contributing

Read CONTRIBUTING.md, AGENTS.md, and the nearest nested AGENTS.md before making changes.

License

MIT — see LICENSE.