About this video

• Video Title: Everything New in Codex CLI (This Week)
• Channel: Ray Amjad
• Speakers: Ray Amjad
• Duration: 00:08:02

Overview

This video by Ray Amjad provides a comprehensive update on the new features and improvements in Codex CLI over the past week. It covers enhancements to the user interface, custom prompt functionality, support for streamable HTTP MCP servers, the introduction of Codex Cloud, and improved visibility of context window usage. The speaker also shares his personal experience and workflow integrating Codex CLI with other tools like Claude Code.

Key takeaways

• Updated UI: Codex CLI has a new UI with a slightly different design, featuring a question mark icon for shortcuts instead of the previous display at the bottom. The model picker has also been improved, allowing for separate selection of model name and reasoning effort.
• Custom Prompts with Arguments: Custom prompts now support named and positional arguments, allowing for more dynamic and reusable prompts. This is demonstrated by creating a "super reviewer" prompt that accepts file names and commit details.
• Streamable HTTP MCP Server Support: Codex CLI now supports streamable HTTP MCP servers, simplifying the configuration by allowing direct URL input and bearer tokens instead of NPX commands.
• Codex Cloud Integration: A new feature, Codex Cloud, allows users to manage and interact with cloud-based Codex tasks directly from the terminal, similar to the web version, offering parallel task execution and environment selection.
• Context Window Usage Monitoring: The CLI now displays the exact token usage for context windows while tasks are running, providing better insight into resource utilization.
• Personal Experience and Workflow: The speaker shares his positive experience using Codex CLI, often in parallel with Claude Code, highlighting Codex CLI's strengths in high-level tasks and identifying outstanding issues that other models might miss.

The video is about new updates to a tool called "Codex CLI," which is used for coding assistance. Think of it like a smart assistant that helps programmers write code faster and better.

Here's a simpler breakdown of the updates:

• Easier to Look At (New UI): The way the tool looks on your screen has been updated. It's a bit cleaner, and finding help (like shortcuts) is now done by pressing a question mark. You can also pick your coding "brain" (model) and how hard it should "think" (reasoning effort) more easily.
• Smarter Custom Instructions (Custom Prompts): You can now give the tool more specific, reusable instructions. For example, you can create a prompt like "Review this code," and tell it exactly what to look for, like a specific file or a commit message.
• Connecting to More Services (HTTP MCP Servers): The tool can now connect to more types of external services more easily, like those using HTTP. This means it can work with a wider range of coding resources.
• Using it in the "Cloud" (Codex Cloud): There's a new feature that lets you use Codex CLI's power through the cloud, directly from your command line. This is like having a powerful assistant that you can access without needing to install everything locally, and it can even run multiple tasks at once.
• Knowing How Much it's "Thinking" (Context Window Usage): You can now see exactly how much "memory" or "attention" the tool is using as it works. This helps you understand how much effort it's putting into a task.
• How the Speaker Uses It: The person in the video uses this tool a lot, often alongside another tool called "Claude Code." He finds Codex CLI very helpful for overall coding tasks and for catching problems that other tools might miss.

In short, Codex CLI is getting better at being a helpful coding assistant with a nicer look, smarter ways to give it instructions, better connections, cloud capabilities, and more transparency about its work.