So we did exactly that: we turned the OpenAI Codex CLI into a DSH plugin. The codex tool surface you already know — exec_command, write_stdin, apply_patch, request_permissions, web_search, view_image, sleep, update_plan, request_user_input, get_context_remaining, new_context, the multi-agent family (spawn_agent and friends), background-task management (list_tasks / task_output / task_stop), and the file primitives view_file / write_file / edit_file / glob / grep — 30 tools in all, now native DSH tools. Same names, same schemas, same behavior.

The payoff is simple: use the Codex CLI tool surface natively inside DSH — no different from opening Codex itself. Every model stays in the environment it knows best — main agent or subagent, it feels like coming home.

Distilled from @openai/codex 0.147.0 (stable). The 0.148 series is still alpha; handler names are unchanged.

System prompt & subagents

lib/system-prompt.js carries the full upstream Codex prompt (gpt_5_2_prompt.md; gpt-5.6 models reuse it). apply() registers it as the agent's sole system-prompt section (complete: true + suppressRuntimeContext()).

Codex's own plan mode is update_plan (it writes todo/write events so the plan renders through DSH's todos projection); there is no DSH enter_plan_mode / exit_plan_mode pair.

lib/subagents.js ships codex-agent, codex-explore, and codex-worker (Codex's built-in default, explorer, and worker roles). The mesh loads them and mounts this plugin on each child with a config.tools whitelist.

Install

Install the plugin into your profile with the official plugin command:
```
dsh plugin --profile web add dsh-kernel-codex
```
GitHub also works (dsh plugin --profile web add github:oppnc/dsh-kernel-codex) because lib/ ships in the repository.

This package is a plain plugin (no dsh.bundle declaration), so dsh plugin installs it as an inactive dependency — that is expected: the preset row below references it by name.
The codex-kernel agent preset ships in dsh-kernel-mesh's presets/ directory. Copy it into the official user-preset root (or, if you run without the mesh, get the preset directory from the mesh repo):
```
dsh_home="${DSH_HOME:-$HOME/.dsh}"
cp -r "$dsh_home/profiles/web/node_modules/dsh-kernel-mesh/presets/codex-kernel" "$dsh_home/.agent-presets/"
```
The preset already includes the codex-surface row; if you author your own preset, add it (the preset also disables the colliding DSH rows tool-fs-search and tool-web):
```
- id: codex-surface
  name: dsh-kernel-codex
```
send_message, interrupt_agent, and list_agents share names with DSH's native control tools: if those rows already registered the names, Codex skips them; otherwise the Codex-named tools deliver the same continuable subagents APIs.

Usage

Pick the codex-kernel preset and the codex-kernel model route. The Codex CLI tool surface is then available to whatever model that route runs.