ask-codex

ask-codex is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from umputun/cc-thingz. It costs 103 tokens per session (2,470 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A way to ask OpenAI Codex for a second opinion during investigation, debugging, or code review.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to investigate an error, review code, debug a stubborn issue, or request Codex's opinion on a technical question.
Why use it?
It provides another analysis when a problem is difficult or your current debugging approaches have not worked.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Part of the thinking-tools plugin — 3 skills shipped together

Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/umputun/cc-thingz/ask-codex
Any agent
npx skills add umputun/cc-thingz --skill ask-codex
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/umputun/cc-thingz

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Or install thinking-tools, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 3 skills.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

agentmods badge for ask-codex

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/umputun/cc-thingz/ask-codex.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/umputun/cc-thingz/ask-codex)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/umputun/cc-thingz/ask-codex"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/umputun/cc-thingz/ask-codex.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 103 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 2,470 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5 $0.00103 $0.02470
Opus 5 $0.00051 $0.01235
Sonnet 5 $0.00021 $0.00494
Haiku 4.5 $0.00010 $0.00247

Measured 5d ago against content hash 9fc88c763d14, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

ask-codex scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 5d ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

plugins/thinking-tools/skills/ask-codex/SKILL.md · 261 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 261 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Ask Codex

Consult OpenAI Codex (GPT-5.5) as a second opinion for investigation, debugging, or review tasks.

Activation Triggers

Explicit:

  • "ask codex", "check with codex", "codex review"
  • "what does codex think", "get codex opinion"
  • "consult codex", "run codex on this"

Automatic (last resort — stuck detection):

  • 4+ failed attempts at the same bug fix or investigation
  • completely out of ideas, all reasonable approaches exhausted
  • going in circles with no progress despite multiple different strategies

Workflow

Step 1: Check Availability

Run which codex to verify the CLI is installed. If not found, inform the user and stop.

Step 2: Build Context

Gather context from the current conversation:

  1. What's the problem/question — summarize in 2-3 sentences
  2. What we know — relevant files, error messages, behavior observed
  3. What we tried — approaches attempted and why they failed (if applicable)
  4. Specific question — what exactly codex should analyze or answer

Codex does NOT auto-load Claude Code's memory files — it only reads AGENTS.md. To give Codex the same project context Claude follows, prepend the memory-load preamble described in Step 3.

Step 3: Construct Prompt

Build a focused prompt. Do NOT dump entire files — codex has full project access and can read them itself. Provide file paths and line references so codex knows where to look.

Prepend a memory-load preamble. Codex auto-loads only AGENTS.md; it does NOT read Claude Code's memory files (CLAUDE.md, CLAUDE.local.md, .claude/rules/, ~/.claude/CLAUDE.md), so the project conventions Claude follows are invisible to Codex unless you tell it to read them. Prepend this line to the prompt:

First read these project guidance files if present: <ABS_HOME>/.claude/CLAUDE.md, CLAUDE.md, CLAUDE.local.md, .claude/rules/
  • Resolve <ABS_HOME> to the absolute home path (run echo $HOME, e.g. /home/<user>) and write the literal path — do NOT leave the string $HOME in the prompt. Whether $HOME expands depends on how the prompt is passed to Codex, and Codex may open the file with a non-shell tool that never expands it, so only a literal absolute path is reliable.
  • No @ prefix — @file is inert in codex exec (literal text, not an import).
  • The project-relative paths resolve against Codex's working directory; Codex skips any that don't exist.

Read the full file on GitHub · 261 lines

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. 5d ago First seen · 261 lines · 103 tokens per session scan A 9fc88c763d14

Subscribe to this mod's changes

ask-codex is a skill published in the GitHub repository umputun/cc-thingz (465 stars, last pushed 11d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 103 tokens to every session and 2,470 once invoked, about $0.0005 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.