Codex

Codex runs two ways in Coldtea: as a local agent in a pane, and as a cloud or background agent. The local side authenticates itself in the terminal. The cloud side stores a credential in Coldtea.

Local Codex

Coldtea does not manage Codex's local login. When you start a Codex pane, Codex runs in the terminal exactly as it does outside Coldtea, and it handles its own sign-in there. If Codex has never been set up on your machine, run it once in the pane and complete its login prompt.

Coldtea only needs to find the codex binary. If Codex does not appear in the agent picker, install the CLI and confirm it runs in your own terminal (see Connect agents).

Cloud Codex

Cloud and background runs use a credential stored in Coldtea for your TeaHouse. Choose a TeaHouse first, or the connect screen shows "Choose a TeaHouse before connecting subscriptions". See Cloud agent credentials for where these settings live.

You have two options for Codex.

API key

Paste an OpenAI API key (it starts with sk-) into the Codex field under the API keys option. Coldtea uses it for Codex cloud runs.

ChatGPT subscription

The subscription option lets cloud runs use your ChatGPT plan instead of an API key. Unlike Claude, there is no token to copy and paste.

Select Connect on the Codex row. A drawer opens with the header "Connect Codex" and runs codex login in a terminal. Sign in with ChatGPT in the browser tab that opens. While you sign in, the drawer shows "Waiting for ChatGPT sign-in…" and watches for the auth file Codex writes at ~/.codex/auth.json. When it detects the file, the connection completes on its own.

If the drawer does not pick it up, select "I've signed in" to check immediately.

Where to go next

• Connect agents for the local-versus-cloud picture across all agents.
• Cloud agent credentials for how stored credentials work per TeaHouse.
• Launch presets to set Codex's autonomy, model, and reasoning effort.
• Agent matrix for what each agent supports.