## What changed
- Load and cache the host skill provider catalog during world-state contribution.
- Render host skill listings from that catalog with Core-compatible budgeting, while preserving Core's full prompt injection for selected host skills.
- Reuse the cached host catalog for shadow selection, including when skill listings are disabled.
- Preserve an empty Core-compatible skills fragment when every entry exceeds the metadata budget, and make budget warnings independent of the configured percentage.
## Testing
- Cover provider-backed host listings, selected-skill prompt injection, shadow selection, disabled listings, oversized prompts, empty fragments, metrics, and warnings.
GitOrigin-RevId: b6b2d8ea14386356094cff5783d121d74657e9e3
## Why
Executor capability discovery can traverse plugin and skill roots, including
symlinks. Under restricted filesystem permissions, discovery must not expose
files outside the permitted paths.
## What changed
- Pass each environment's filesystem sandbox context through capability root
discovery and apply it to metadata, directory walks, and file reads.
- Enable discovery for restricted sessions so permitted executor skills remain
available while inaccessible roots and symlink targets are omitted.
- Key discovery caches by sandbox context and reject sandboxed discovery on
executors that do not advertise support for it.
- Split requests with more than 128 roots into supported-size batches.
## Testing
- Cover permitted and denied external symlink targets.
- Verify restricted skill listing excludes inaccessible skills.
- Verify cache separation across permission contexts and discovery of 129 roots.
GitOrigin-RevId: 44d16468ca003403bdb8b71a04ae8c9ff94ed494
## What changed
- Add an optional `ExtensionMetrics` capability to thread, turn-input, and world-state contributors, backed by session telemetry in the host.
- Record skill counts, omissions, and truncated description characters for extension-rendered catalogs, tagged by the catalog surface.
- Preserve host session attribution on extension metrics, including the effective model for each turn, and prevent extension tags from overriding host metadata.
- Avoid duplicate host-catalog samples by recording world-state metrics only when the section is published or changes.
## Testing
- Cover metric values and surface tags, session metadata preservation, turn-level model changes, and host world-state publication behavior.
GitOrigin-RevId: 9059e521943a8f81df25a38b03692eddbc1d990d
## Why
Skill catalog rendering can shorten descriptions or omit enabled skills to fit
the model context budget. Surface these reductions so users know when the
model-visible catalog has lost detail.
## What changed
- Emit a warning with the omitted skill count whenever entries do not fit.
- Warn when description shortening averages more than 100 characters per skill.
- Deduplicate executor catalog warnings across repeated world-state builds in a
turn.
## Testing
- Cover the description-shortening threshold and omission warning text.
- Verify warnings through extension and production-turn catalogs, including
per-turn deduplication.
GitOrigin-RevId: bd7fc3482e5dfd8c79072f772a2f54aa502478d9
## What changed
- Remove the step-scoped `ExtensionData` argument from context, turn-input, and tool contributors.
- Pass the host's optional `McpResourceClient` through `ThreadStartInput` so extensions can retain session capabilities explicitly.
- Keep the MCP resource client in skills-owned session state for catalog loading and skill tools.
GitOrigin-RevId: bafa77bcd998aff408d6a396c5fd9ac268c4cce4
## Why
Selected capability roots can contribute plugins, MCP servers, connectors, and
skills. Discovering each contribution separately requires repeated access to the
executor filesystem.
## What changed
- Add the `capabilityRoots/discoverV1` exec-server RPC to scan selected roots and
materialize recognized plugin manifests, configuration files, skill
instructions, and skill metadata in one bounded request.
- Add the opt-in `executor_capability_discovery` feature, with a thread-scoped
cache and per-step snapshot shared by MCP and skill discovery.
- Parse MCP, connector, and skill contributions from the materialized snapshot,
including serving cached skill instructions without another filesystem read.
## Testing
- Cover discovery limits, manifest precedence, root-local failures, cache reuse,
plugin contributions, and parity with the existing environment skill loader.
GitOrigin-RevId: f98fd2321cafb58c596db02da1f83c09d8eb375d
## What changed
- Add an opt-in `skill_search` feature that ranks prompt-visible skills against each turn's user input with a bounded weighted lexical selector.
- Keep the ranked selection out of model-visible context and record metrics for selection cost, catalog reduction, and whether later implicit or `skills.read` invocations matched the ranked candidates.
- Include host-provided skills in the experiment catalog without changing the rendered skill catalog.
## Testing
- Add selector unit tests covering ranking, limits, truncation, stop words, and deterministic tie-breaking.
- Add extension tests covering turn-local invocation recording and host-skill shadow selection.
GitOrigin-RevId: 4d00a1c805ea8b391d6c6ac6a8450afa88ca3e25
## Why
Make it easier to measure the performance of different parts of skill
loading.
## What
- Add spans for step-context capture, world-state construction, executor
catalog snapshot/root loading, and environment skill loading.
- Record the discovered environment skill count.
- Trace outbound exec-server requests with client kind and RPC method
fields.
- Update trace propagation tests to assert that requests keep the parent
trace id while creating their own child span.
## Why
A selected executor environment can be unavailable in one model step and
ready in the next. The model should see its skills only while that
environment is ready, without rescanning stable files on every sample.
The product assumption is simple:
- an environment ID names one stable logical environment;
- the selected root contents do not change during the thread.
## Behavior
```text
E1 unavailable -> do not show E1 skills
E1 ready -> discover once, cache, show through World State
E1 unavailable -> hide skills, keep cache
E1 ready again -> reuse cache, show skills again
resume -> create a new thread cache and discover again
```
The cache key is the full `SelectedCapabilityRoot`. Availability does
not invalidate it; dropping the extension's thread state does.
The step supplies the ready selected roots directly. They do not have to
be turn environments:
```text
turn environment: laptop
selected root: worker:/plugins/lint-fix
worker ready -> lint-fix skills are visible
```
## What changes
- Keeps executor skill catalogs in the existing skills extension.
- Passes the roots resolved as ready for the step into World State
contributors.
- Loads each ready selected root at most once per thread.
- Contributes the executor catalog as the `skills` World State section.
- Uses the exact step catalog for explicit skill selection and body
reads.
- Leaves host and orchestrator skill behavior where it already lives.
Taking a step snapshot itself does not add an RPC. Executor filesystem
calls happen only on the first discovery of a stable root for that
thread.
## What does not change
- No filesystem watcher or content-based invalidation.
- No retry/generation framework.
- No skill runtime migration into core.
- No general rewrite of the skills extension.
## Stack
1. Extension-owned World State sections.
2. **This PR:** project cached executor skills through World State.
3. Pin one MCP runtime to each model step.
4. Project selected MCP/app/connector metadata by environment
availability.
5. One end-to-end integration scenario.
## Why
Orchestrator-provided skills and Codex Apps MCP tools add model-visible
instructions, resources, and tools beyond the local workspace. Hosts
need config-level switches to disable those orchestrator-owned surfaces
independently, without disabling regular skills or regular MCP servers.
## What changed
- Adds `[orchestrator.skills].enabled` and `[orchestrator.mcp].enabled`
config entries, both defaulting to `true`.
- Includes the new settings in `config.schema.json` and in the config
lock so resolved thread configuration preserves the same orchestrator
exposure decisions.
- Threads `orchestrator.skills.enabled` through the app-server skills
extension so disabled orchestrator skills do not expose the `skills`
namespace or inject orchestrator skill context.
- Gates Codex Apps MCP exposure, app instructions, and app auth
eligibility on `orchestrator.mcp.enabled` while leaving non-Codex-Apps
MCP tools available.
- Updates the thread-manager sample config to disable both
orchestrator-owned surfaces.
## Verification
- Added config parsing, loading, defaulting, and schema coverage for the
new settings.
- Added MCP exposure coverage that `orchestrator.mcp.enabled = false`
removes Codex Apps tools while preserving regular MCP tools.
- Added app-server coverage that `orchestrator.skills.enabled = false`
prevents orchestrator skill tools, prompts, and resource reads from
reaching the model turn.
## Why
Hosted orchestrator skills are read through the remote MCP resource
server. Within one thread, the same catalog or skill resource can be
requested multiple times by prompt injection and the `skills.list` /
`skills.read` tools. Re-fetching adds latency and can make those
surfaces observe different remote contents during the same thread.
This is a follow-up to #28333: orchestrator skills remain limited to
threads without a local executor, and those threads now get a stable
per-thread view of the remote skill data they use.
## What changed
- Reuse the existing per-thread orchestrator catalog snapshot for
`skills.list` and `skills.read` availability checks.
- Cache successful orchestrator resource reads by authority, package,
and resource so prompt injection and tool calls share the same contents.
- Keep the cache memory-only and bounded to 100 resources and 8 MiB per
thread.
- Leave host and executor skill reads unchanged, and do not cache failed
remote reads.
## Verification
- Extended the app-server MCP resource integration test to read the same
hosted skill resource twice and verify that the remote server receives
one read.
- The same test verifies that catalog discovery and the selected skill's
main prompt are each fetched only once per thread.
## Why
App-server threads without a local executor need orchestrator-owned
skills from the hosted `codex_apps` MCP server. Threads with the local
executor already discover installed skills from the local filesystem.
After the orchestrator skill provider was enabled for every app-server
thread, local-executor threads also received the hosted skill catalog
and the `skills.list` and `skills.read` tools. This changed the existing
local behavior and could expose a second hosted copy of a skill that was
already installed locally.
## What changed
- Expose the thread's selected execution environments to extensions at
thread startup.
- Enable orchestrator skills only when the reserved local environment is
not selected.
- Apply that decision consistently to hosted skill catalog discovery,
explicit skill injection, and the `skills.list` and `skills.read` tools.
## Verification
- The existing no-executor app-server test continues to verify hosted
skill discovery, invocation, and child-resource reads.
- A new app-server test verifies that local-executor threads do not
receive hosted skill context or `skills.*` tools.
## Why
`ext/skills` currently depends on `codex-core` for two host concerns:
reading the concrete `Config` type and borrowing core-owned
model-context fragment types. That coupling prevents the extension from
being assembled independently above core and leaves context that belongs
to the skills feature owned by core.
This stacked PR introduces the host boundary needed for the broader
extension migration while intentionally preserving existing skills
behavior. It is stacked on #27404.
## What changed
- Adds a small public `SkillsExtensionConfig` view and makes skills
installation generic over the host config type.
- Requires the host to map its config into that view; app-server
supplies the current `Config` values.
- Moves the available-skills and selected-skill context fragment
implementations into `ext/skills`, preserving their roles, markers, and
rendered bytes.
- Removes the direct `codex-core` dependency from
`codex-skills-extension`.
- Keeps local discovery, invocation, side effects, and the
`codex-core-skills` compatibility types unchanged for later staged PRs.
## Behavior
This adds no capability and is intended to have no user-visible or
model-visible behavior change. The install API and ownership boundary
change internally; emitted skills context remains byte-for-byte
compatible.
## Validation
- Updates the skills extension integration coverage to use a host-owned
test config.
- Asserts the complete rendered catalog and selected-skill fragments,
including their roles and markers.
- `just bazel-lock-check`
- Rust tests and Clippy were not run locally per request; CI will run
them.
## Summary
- cache the first remote skill catalog outcome per thread, including
failures
- preserve discovery errors as catalog warnings
- update the existing cache regression test to verify failed discovery
is attempted once
## Why
A failed or hanging `codex_apps` `resources/list` call could run once
while building initial context and immediately again while contributing
first-turn input. With the discovery timeout, an ordinary Apps turn
could wait up to 20 seconds before inference and retry again on later
turns even when no remote skill was mentioned.
Caching a warning-only empty catalog preserves graceful degradation
while preventing repeated synchronous discovery attempts.
## Testing
- `just fmt`
- Tests and Clippy not run per request; CI will validate the change.
## Why
#27198 made the extension-owned `codex_apps` MCP connection the hosted
plugin runtime, but its `mcp/skill` resources still bypassed the skills
extension. App-server could list and read those resources through
generic MCP APIs, but a thread with no selected environment did not
expose them in the model's skills catalog or load their `SKILL.md`
through `$skill`.
Hosted skills should stay remote while using the same typed catalog,
source authority, deduplication, bounded contextual catalog, and
selected-skill prompt injection as host and executor skills. They should
not be downloaded or exposed as ambient filesystem paths.
## What changed
- Add a session-scoped `McpResourceClient` over the replaceable MCP
connection manager so resource list/read calls follow startup and
refresh replacements.
- Add a `BackendSkillProvider` that pages `codex_apps` resources,
accepts bounded and validated `mcp/skill` entries, and reads a selected
skill's `SKILL.md` through the same MCP connection.
- Register the remote provider in app-server and include it in the
skills catalog even when a thread has no selected capability roots or
executor.
- Contribute hosted skill metadata through the bounded
`AvailableSkillsInstructions` developer-context path, exclude remote
entries from per-turn catalog injection, and classify `<skills>`
messages as contextual developer content so rollback can trim and
rebuild them correctly.
## Testing
- Extend the app-server MCP resource integration test with
`environments: []` to exercise two-page discovery, filter a
non-`mcp/skill` resource, verify the escaped developer catalog entry and
user-role `<skill>` fragment containing the fetched `SKILL.md`, and
preserve generic MCP resource reads.
- Add core event-mapping coverage that classifies `<skills>` developer
messages as contextual history.
## Why
CCA is moving toward a split runtime where the orchestrator may not have
a filesystem, while executors can expose preinstalled plugins and
skills. A thread therefore needs to select capabilities without asking
app-server or core to interpret executor-owned paths through the
orchestrator's filesystem.
The longer-term model is broader than executor skills:
- A plugin is a bundle of skills, MCP servers, connectors/apps, and
hooks.
- A plugin root can be local, executor-owned, or hosted by a backend.
- Components inside one plugin can use different access and execution
mechanisms. A skill may be read from a filesystem or through backend
tools; an HTTP MCP server can run without an executor; a stdio MCP
server or hook needs an execution environment.
- Core should carry generic extension initialization data. The extension
that owns a component should discover it, expose it to the model, and
invoke it through the appropriate runtime.
This PR establishes that architecture through one complete vertical:
selecting a root on an executor, discovering the skills beneath it,
exposing those skills to the model, and reading an explicitly invoked
`SKILL.md` through the same executor.
## Contract
`thread/start` gains an experimental `selectedCapabilityRoots` field:
```json
{
"selectedCapabilityRoots": [
{
"id": "deploy-plugin@1",
"location": {
"type": "environment",
"environmentId": "workspace",
"path": "/opt/codex/plugins/deploy"
}
}
]
}
```
The root is intentionally not classified as a "plugin" or "skill" in the
API. It can point at a standalone skill, a directory containing several
skills, or a plugin containing skills and other components. This PR only
teaches the skills extension how to consume it; later extensions can
resolve MCP, connector, and hook components from the same selection.
The platform-supplied `id` is stable selection identity. The location
says which runtime owns the root and gives that runtime an opaque path.
App-server does not inspect or canonicalize the path.
## What changed
### Generic thread extension initialization
App-server converts selected roots into `ExtensionDataInit`. Core
carries that generic initialization value until the final thread ID is
known, then creates thread-scoped `ExtensionData` before lifecycle
contributors run.
This keeps `Session` and core independent of the capability-selection
contract. The initialization value is consumed during construction; it
is not retained as another long-lived `Session` field.
### Executor-backed skills
The skills extension now owns an `ExecutorSkillProvider` that:
- resolves the selected environment through `EnvironmentManager`
- discovers, canonicalizes, and reads skills through that environment's
`ExecutorFileSystem`
- contributes the bounded selected-skill catalog as stable developer
context
- reads an explicitly invoked skill body through the authority that
listed it
- warns when an environment or root is unavailable
- never falls back to the orchestrator filesystem for an executor-owned
root
Skill catalog and instruction fragments have hard byte bounds, which
also bound them below the 10K-token per-item context limit. If a
selected executor skill has the same name as a legacy local skill, the
executor selection owns that invocation and the local body is not
injected a second time.
Existing local and bundled skill loading remains in place. Omitting
`selectedCapabilityRoots` therefore preserves current local-only
behavior.
## Current semantics
- Only environment-owned locations are represented in this first
contract.
- Roots are resolved by the destination extension, not by app-server or
core.
- An unavailable executor or invalid root produces a warning and no
capabilities from that root; it does not trigger a local-filesystem
fallback.
- Selection applies to a newly started active thread.
- MCP servers, connectors, and hooks beneath a selected plugin root are
not activated yet.
- Selection is not yet persisted or inherited across resume, fork, or
subagent creation. Existing local capabilities continue to behave as
they do today in those flows.
## Planned vertical follow-ups
1. **Hosted HTTP MCP:** add an extension-backed HTTP MCP source that
works without an executor, then replace the special-purpose MCP plugins
loader with that implementation.
2. **Executor MCP:** register and execute stdio MCP servers through the
environment that owns the selected plugin root.
3. **Backend skills:** add a hosted skill source whose catalog and
bodies are accessed through extension tools rather than a filesystem.
4. **Connectors and hooks:** activate those components through their
owning extensions, using the same selected-root boundary and
component-specific runtime.
5. **Durable selection:** define the desired-selection lifecycle,
persist it, and make resume, fork, and subagent inheritance explicit
rather than accidental.
6. **Local convergence:** incrementally route existing local plugin,
skill, and MCP loading through the same extension model while preserving
current local behavior.
Each follow-up remains reviewable as an end-to-end capability. The
platform selects roots, generic thread extension data carries the
selection, and the owning extension resolves and operates its component.
## Verification
Coverage added for:
- app-server end-to-end discovery and explicit invocation of a skill
inside an executor-selected plugin root
- exclusive invocation when a selected executor skill collides with a
local skill name
- executor filesystem authority for discovery, canonicalization, and
reads
- thread extension initialization before lifecycle contributors run
- stable executor catalog context, explicit invocation, context
rebuilding, hidden skills, and preserved host/remote catalog behavior
Targeted protocol, core-skills, skills-extension, core lifecycle, and
app-server executor-skill tests were run during development.
## Why
The skills extension needs a real turn-time path before host, executor,
or remote skills can be routed through it. The previous code was mostly
a placeholder catalog/provider sketch, so there was no bounded
available-skills fragment, no source-owned `SKILL.md` read, and no place
for warnings or per-turn selection state to live.
This PR makes `ext/skills` the authority-preserving flow for listing
candidate skills and injecting only explicitly selected main prompts,
without adding more of that logic to `codex-core`.
## What changed
- Expands catalog entries with `main_prompt`, display path, short
description, dependency metadata, enabled/prompt visibility flags, and
authority/package-aware read requests.
- Replaces the placeholder `providers/*` modules with
`SkillProviderSource` and `SkillProviders`, routing list/read/search
calls by source kind and surfacing provider failures as warnings.
- Adds bounded available-skills rendering and `SKILL.md` main-prompt
truncation before the fragments enter model context.
- Resolves explicit skill selections from structured `UserInput::Skill`,
skill-file mentions, `skill://...` paths, and plain `$skill` text
mentions, then reads selected prompts through their owning provider.
- Stores mutable per-thread skills config and per-turn
catalog/selection/warning state.
- Adds `install_with_providers` so tests and future host wiring can
supply concrete providers.
## Testing
- Not run locally.
- Added `codex-rs/ext/skills/tests/skills_extension.rs` coverage for
available-catalog injection, selected prompt injection through the
owning provider, and prompt-hidden skills that remain invokable.
## Disclaimer
This is only here for iteration purpose! Do not make any code rely on
this
## Why
Skills still live behind `codex-core` discovery and injection paths, but
the extension system needs an authority-aware home before that logic can
move. This adds that boundary without changing current skills behavior,
and keeps host, executor, and remote skills distinct so future
list/read/search flows do not collapse back to ambient local paths.
## What changed
- Add the `codex-skills-extension` workspace/Bazel crate under
`ext/skills`.
- Define the initial catalog, authority, provider, and turn-state types
for authority-bound skill packages and resources.
- Register placeholder thread/config/prompt/turn lifecycle contributors
plus host, executor, and remote provider aggregation points.
- Capture the remaining extraction work as TODOs, including the missing
extension API hooks needed for per-turn catalog construction and typed
skill injection.
- Keep plugins outside the runtime skills model: plugin-installed skills
are treated as materialized host-owned skill sources once available.
## Verification
- Not run locally.
felixxia-oai