Codex Code Review

Overview

Use the OpenAI Codex CLI to perform AI-powered code reviews. Supports reviewing branches, uncommitted changes, specific commits, and custom-scoped reviews. Reviews are read-only and never modify the working tree.

Prerequisites

• Codex CLI installed (npm i -g @openai/codex)
• Authenticated (codex login)

Workflow

Step 1: Determine Review Scope

Ask the user what they want reviewed if not already clear:

Scope	When to use
Branch diff	Before opening or merging a PR
Uncommitted changes	During active development
Specific commit	Auditing a single changeset
Custom	User provides specific review instructions

Step 2: Run the Review

Branch review (compare current branch against base):

codex review --base main -c model="gpt-5.3-codex"

Uncommitted changes:

codex review --uncommitted -c model="gpt-5.3-codex"

Specific commit:

codex review --commit <SHA> -c model="gpt-5.3-codex"

Custom review with focused instructions:

codex review -c model="gpt-5.3-codex" "Review the code for accessibility regressions and WCAG compliance."

Common Flags

Flag	Description
--base <BRANCH>	Review changes against a base branch
--uncommitted	Review staged, unstaged, and untracked changes
--commit <SHA>	Review changes introduced by a specific commit
--title <TITLE>	Optional commit title for the review summary
-c model="gpt-5.3-codex"	Override the model (preferred: gpt-5.3-codex)

Rules

• Default to reviewing the current branch diff against main unless the user specifies otherwise
• Always pass -c model="gpt-5.3-codex" to use the preferred model
• Use --base, --uncommitted, or --commit flags to set the review scope instead of describing it in the prompt
• Present findings sorted by priority (highest first)
• Summarize the overall assessment before listing individual findings
• If Codex CLI is not installed, instruct the user to run npm i -g @openai/codex and codex login