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.