Workflow Studio for Codex

Turn a substantial coding request into a scoped plan, implementation, independent review, repair, and verified result—inside Codex, with an inline dashboard.

Workflow Studio is an open-source Codex plugin built on Ultracode. It brings a Claude-style workflow to Codex while keeping repository writes bounded and acceptance tied to observed file changes.

Illustrative dashboard. Actual timing and token usage depend on the task.

Install

Requirements: macOS, Node.js 24+, Git, an authenticated Codex installation with custom filesystem permission profiles, and Ultracode. Other operating systems have not been validated; the worker wrapper uses macOS tooling and zsh.

Install the engine and this plugin:

codex plugin marketplace add just-every/plugins
codex plugin add ultracode@just-every
codex plugin marketplace add alexanderradahl/workflow-studio
codex plugin add workflow-studio@workflow-studio

Start a new Codex chat so the skill and MCP server load. Node must be available to the Codex app. No private shell helper, additional API key, or repository-local npm installation is needed to run the installed plugin. Workers use your existing Codex authentication and consume your account's model usage.

The runtime discovers Codex on PATH or in the supported macOS app locations, and Ultracode in its installed just-every plugin cache. It does not install or update these dependencies automatically.

Related MCP server: nokto-agent-orchestrator MCP server

Try it

$workflow-studio Implement pagination across src/search and tests/search.
$workflow-studio Create a launch brief at docs/launch-brief.md.
Show the latest Workflow Studio dashboard.

Describe the outcome, constraints, and relevant checks. Codex inspects the repository and establishes the exact write scopes before execution. Prepare the target repository's dependencies first; workflow workers have command networking disabled.

How it works

Discover → Plan → Implement → Review → Repair → Verify
  parallel          one       parallel   one    read-only
  read-only         writer    read-only   writer

Single-file mode uses Frame → Plan → Build → Review → Repair → Verify. Repair runs only when reviewers find actionable issues. Workspace writers run sequentially so they do not race each other. Final acceptance checks the actual changed-file set against the writer and verifier reports.

The dashboard shows workflow phases, findings, authorized scopes, planned/changed/verified files, duration, and usage. Its Open output / Open changes actions hand the result back to Codex.

Write boundaries and verification

• Workspace mode requires a canonical Git root with a valid HEAD and 1–32 normalized relative write scopes.

• Workspaces and their Git metadata must live outside shared /tmp and /var/tmp directories, where Codex grants shell write access independently of custom scopes.

• Root-wide access, .git, traversal, symbolic links, hard links in writable scopes, and unsafe missing parents are rejected.

• Workers preserve applicable repository instructions and pre-existing changes. They cannot commit, push, publish, deploy, send messages, or use command networking.

• Repository AGENTS.md instructions stay active. Inherited command-approval .rules files are disabled so unrestricted command grants cannot bypass worker scopes.

• Host snapshots detect changes in tracked, untracked, and ignored files. Ignored dependency trees use aggregate content hashes and bounded parallel hashing to keep inventories compact. Changes outside the authorized scopes prevent acceptance.

• Report schemas require repository-relative paths. The host independently checks the reported and observed file sets.

• accepted: true is the success condition. A failed run may leave partial changes; it does not imply rollback. Review the changed files before continuing.

The plugin exposes fixed task arguments; callers cannot pass arbitrary workflow scripts, binaries, flags, environment variables, or network overrides. See SECURITY.md for reporting and limitations.

Troubleshooting

Version 0.2.1 repairs the planner path-format failures, obscured errors, and snapshot bottleneck found in real workspace runs. See the changelog for details.

Reliable selection in crowded Codex profiles

Explicit $workflow-studio invocation is the portable baseline. Codex can also select the skill implicitly for eligible work. To make routing more reliable in profiles with many skills, optionally add this bounded rule to ~/.codex/AGENTS.md:

Use $workflow-studio for an explicit substantial single-file artifact or multi-file repository change when separate discovery, planning, implementation, review, repair, and verification materially improve the result. Require a concrete brief, a destination, and bounded write scopes. Keep direct answers, trivial edits, read-only work, command-only tasks, and external actions on their ordinary Codex path. Invocation alone does not authorize a write.

The plugin does not edit global Codex instructions during installation.

Develop and contribute

git clone https://github.com/alexanderradahl/workflow-studio.git
cd workflow-studio
npm ci
npm run check

The test suite runs without model calls or Codex credentials. It covers workflow execution with controlled worker reports, runtime acceptance evidence, path guards, workspace snapshots, worker arguments, MCP stdio, discovery, and packaging. Live model verification is separate and uses account usage.

The inline widget is bundled into dist/workflow-studio-widget.html; the installed server uses Node's built-in modules. Run npm run build after changing widget sources and commit the generated file. CI checks that the bundle is current.

Start with CONTRIBUTING.md, release guidance, and the issues.

License and attribution

MIT, copyright Alexander Benz. Workflow Studio uses the MIT-licensed Ultracode engine as a separately installed dependency and bundles the MCP Apps client with its license notices. This is an independent project; it is not an official OpenAI or Anthropic product.