Codex CTO — Inverted Orchestration

Codex plans and reviews. Claude Code executes. This inverts the codex-orchestrator pattern: instead of Claude Code delegating to Codex subagents, Codex directs Claude Code as the engineering team.

Protocol

1. CTO plans   →  cto-invoke.sh plan "<objective>"
2. You execute  →  native tools (Read, Edit, Write, Bash, Glob, Grep)
3. CTO reviews  →  cto-invoke.sh review "<objective + results>"
4. Loop         →  if "revise", fix and re-submit for review (max 5 iterations)

Step 1: Get the Plan

Run the plan phase with the user's objective:

~/.claude/skills/codex-cto/scripts/cto-invoke.sh plan "<OBJECTIVE>" [--model MODEL]

Parse the returned JSON. It contains:

objective — what to accomplish
analysis — CTO's assessment of the codebase
strategy — high-level approach
tasks[] — ordered task list with IDs, actions, targets, descriptions, acceptance criteria, and dependencies
verification — commands to run after all tasks complete

Step 2: Execute Tasks

Work through each task in dependency order using native tools. For each task:

Read the description and acceptance_criteria
Execute the action (create_file, modify_file, delete_file, run_command, verify)
Verify each acceptance criterion before moving to the next task
Track what was done and what the outcome was

Do not deviate from the plan without reason. If a task is blocked or the plan has an error, note it and continue with unblocked tasks. Report blockers in the review submission.

Step 3: Submit for Review

After executing all tasks, run the review phase. Include the original objective and a summary of what was done:

~/.claude/skills/codex-cto/scripts/cto-invoke.sh review "<OBJECTIVE>. Results: <summary of what was done, any issues encountered>"

Parse the returned JSON:

verdict: "approve" — done. Report success to the user.
verdict: "revise" — check task_reviews for feedback and revised_tasks for new/updated tasks. Fix issues and re-submit.
verdict: "abort" — fundamental problem. Report the CTO's reason to the user and stop.

Step 4: Iterate (if revise)

On a "revise" verdict:

Read each task_reviews entry with status fail or partial
Execute the fixes described in feedback and any revised_tasks
Re-submit for review (step 3)
Maximum 5 review iterations. If the CTO issues 3 consecutive "revise" verdicts, escalate to the user.

Model Selection

The --model flag passes through to codex exec. Available models:

Model	ID	Notes
GPT-5.4 Pro	`gpt-5.4-pro`	Default for plan phase. Deepest reasoning for architectural decomposition.
GPT-5.4	`gpt-5.4`	Default for review phase. Unified coding + reasoning flagship.
GPT-5 Mini	`gpt-5-mini`	Cost-optimized, fast iteration.
GPT-5.3-Codex	`gpt-5.3-codex`	Previous generation. Still functional.

Omit --model to use the default from ~/.codex/config.toml.

Options

Option	Description
`--model <id>`	Override model (default: config default)
`--dry-run`	Print command without executing

Artifacts

Plan and review JSON files are saved to .codex-cto/<PID>/ in the working directory. Each invocation creates sequentially numbered files (plan-001.json, review-001.json, etc.). PID namespacing prevents conflicts between concurrent sessions.

Diagnostics

Reuse codex-orchestrator's status script for CLI diagnostics:

~/.claude/skills/codex-orchestrator/scripts/codex-status.sh

Examples

# Simple feature
/codex-cto Add a health check endpoint at /health returning {status: "ok"}

# With model override
/codex-cto Refactor the auth module to use JWT --model gpt-5-mini

# Dry run to inspect the command
~/.claude/skills/codex-cto/scripts/cto-invoke.sh plan "Add rate limiting" --dry-run

Sister Skill

This skill is the inverse of codex-orchestrator. Use codex-orchestrator when Claude Code should delegate one-shot specialist tasks to Codex. Use codex-cto when Codex should direct Claude Code through a plan-execute-review loop.