https://github.com/openai/codex/pull/793 had important information on
the `notify` config option that seemed worth memorializing, so this PR
updates the documentation about all of the configurable options in
`~/.codex/config.toml`.
With this change, you can specify a program that will be executed to get
notified about events generated by Codex. The notification info will be
packaged as a JSON object. The supported notification types are defined
by the `UserNotification` enum introduced in this PR. Initially, it
contains only one variant, `AgentTurnComplete`:
```rust
pub(crate) enum UserNotification {
#[serde(rename_all = "kebab-case")]
AgentTurnComplete {
turn_id: String,
/// Messages that the user sent to the agent to initiate the turn.
input_messages: Vec<String>,
/// The last message sent by the assistant in the turn.
last_assistant_message: Option<String>,
},
}
```
This is intended to support the common case when a "turn" ends, which
often means it is now your chance to give Codex further instructions.
For example, I have the following in my `~/.codex/config.toml`:
```toml
notify = ["python3", "/Users/mbolin/.codex/notify.py"]
```
I created my own custom notifier script that calls out to
[terminal-notifier](https://github.com/julienXX/terminal-notifier) to
show a desktop push notification on macOS. Contents of `notify.py`:
```python
#!/usr/bin/env python3
import json
import subprocess
import sys
def main() -> int:
if len(sys.argv) != 2:
print("Usage: notify.py <NOTIFICATION_JSON>")
return 1
try:
notification = json.loads(sys.argv[1])
except json.JSONDecodeError:
return 1
match notification_type := notification.get("type"):
case "agent-turn-complete":
assistant_message = notification.get("last-assistant-message")
if assistant_message:
title = f"Codex: {assistant_message}"
else:
title = "Codex: Turn Complete!"
input_messages = notification.get("input_messages", [])
message = " ".join(input_messages)
title += message
case _:
print(f"not sending a push notification for: {notification_type}")
return 0
subprocess.check_output(
[
"terminal-notifier",
"-title",
title,
"-message",
message,
"-group",
"codex",
"-ignoreDnD",
"-activate",
"com.googlecode.iterm2",
]
)
return 0
if __name__ == "__main__":
sys.exit(main())
```
For reference, here are related PRs that tried to add this functionality
to the TypeScript version of the Codex CLI:
* https://github.com/openai/codex/pull/160
* https://github.com/openai/codex/pull/498
While creating a basic MCP server in
https://github.com/openai/codex/pull/792, I discovered a number of bugs
with the initial `mcp-types` crate that I needed to fix in order to
implement the server.
For example, I discovered that when serializing a message, `"jsonrpc":
"2.0"` was not being included.
I changed the codegen so that the field is added as:
```rust
#[serde(rename = "jsonrpc", default = "default_jsonrpc")]
pub jsonrpc: String,
```
This ensures that the field is serialized as `"2.0"`, though the field
still has to be assigned, which is tedious. I may experiment with
`Default` or something else in the future. (I also considered creating a
custom serializer, but I'm not sure it's worth the trouble.)
While here, I also added `MCP_SCHEMA_VERSION` and `JSONRPC_VERSION` as
`pub const`s for the crate.
I also discovered that MCP rejects sending `null` for optional fields,
so I had to add `#[serde(skip_serializing_if = "Option::is_none")]` on
`Option` fields.
---
[//]: # (BEGIN SAPLING FOOTER)
Stack created with [Sapling](https://sapling-scm.com). Best reviewed
with [ReviewStack](https://reviewstack.dev/openai/codex/pull/791).
* #792
* __->__ #791
This adds our own `mcp-types` crate to our Cargo workspace. We vendor in
the
[`2025-03-26/schema.json`](05f2045136/schema/2025-03-26/schema.json)
from the MCP repo and introduce a `generate_mcp_types.py` script to
codegen the `lib.rs` from the JSON schema.
Test coverage is currently light, but I plan to refine things as we
start making use of this crate.
And yes, I am aware that
https://github.com/modelcontextprotocol/rust-sdk exists, though the
published https://crates.io/crates/rmcp appears to be a competing
effort. While things are up in the air, it seems better for us to
control our own version of this code.
Incidentally, Codex did a lot of the work for this PR. I told it to
never edit `lib.rs` directly and instead to update
`generate_mcp_types.py` and then re-run it to update `lib.rs`. It
followed these instructions and once things were working end-to-end, I
iteratively asked for changes to the tests until the API looked
reasonable (and the code worked). Codex was responsible for figuring out
what to do to `generate_mcp_types.py` to achieve the requested test/API
changes.
