ask-codex

Purpose

Delegate a focused question or review to Codex (OpenAI's CLI) and relay its answer back to the user as an independent, attributed second opinion.

This skill does not replace your own judgment — it gathers Codex's view so the user can compare it against yours (and against other reviewers such as Antigravity).

How Codex is invoked

The repository ships a project-local Codex config (.codex/config.toml) and a wrapper script. Always call Codex through the script so the project config and working directory are correct:

npm run codex:exec -- "<prompt>"

This runs codex exec non-interactively (CODEX_HOME=.codex, -C <repo root>) and prints Codex's answer to stdout. Codex runs in the repo, so it can read files itself — reference paths in the prompt instead of pasting large files.

Steps

1. Frame the prompt. Turn the user's request into a single self-contained prompt for Codex. Include:

   • the role ("You are a senior reviewer of River Review …"),
   • the file paths Codex should read (e.g. docs/development/1255-…md, runners/core/review-runner.mjs),
   • the specific questions to answer, numbered,
   • a request to be concise and to state a clear conclusion.

2. Run Codex with a generous timeout (design reviews can take minutes). Set the timeout on the Bash tool call itself (e.g. timeout: 600000 ms) — do not prefix the command with timeout 600: macOS ships no GNU timeout binary, so that prefix fails with command not found.

   npm run codex:exec -- "<prompt>"
   

3. Handle authentication failure. If the output contains 401 Unauthorized / Missing bearer / Reconnecting..., Codex is not authenticated. Do not retry blindly. Tell the user to authenticate themselves in this session (these are interactive / secret-bearing and you cannot run them for them):

   • ! CODEX_HOME="$(git rev-parse --show-toplevel)/.codex" codex login (the CODEX_HOME prefix is required — a bare codex login writes credentials to ~/.codex and the project-local config keeps failing), or
   • set OPENAI_API_KEY in the environment (warn that pasting a key into chat leaves it in history; prefer env/keychain). Then offer to re-run once authenticated.

4. Relay faithfully. Quote or summarize Codex's answer and attribute it to Codex ("Codex の見解:"). Keep Codex's conclusion distinct from your own. If you disagree, say so separately — do not silently overwrite its opinion.

5. Persist when useful. For design decisions, offer to record Codex's verdict in the relevant memo / issue / PR so it is not lost.

Guardrails

• Never paste secrets or .env contents into the Codex prompt.
• Codex executes in workspace-write sandbox; treat its file edits as proposals to review, not as automatically trusted changes.
• This skill is for advisory review. Decisions and commits stay with the user and with you.