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Codex

Add Cranes to Codex with the Cranes plugin, which brings your thinking to every prompt, or with one command.

There are two ways to add Cranes to Codex: the Cranes plugin, which makes Cranes automatic, or just the connection.

What’s automatic, and what depends on Codex

With the plugin Connection only
Your thinking on each prompt Automatic Codex decides
@cranes on its own checks the work Automatic Codex decides
Your skills in Codex Copied at the start of each session No
Saving Offered; kept only on your yes Offered; kept only on your yes

With the plugin, before Codex works on each message, Cranes is asked how your thinking bears on it and on the work, and what applies is added for Codex to use. When nothing applies, nothing is added. Slash commands and empty messages are skipped. It sends your message and a short description of the work (the repository and branch, how far along it is, how the session started, and up to five of your earlier messages that corrected Codex), never your code. See When Cranes comes in.

Install the plugin

The plugin is installed from a copy of Cranes’s code for now; it isn’t in a public plugin marketplace yet. From a checkout of the repository:

  1. In a terminal, run codex plugin marketplace add ./pikespeak/plugins/codex.
  2. Run codex, open /plugins, and install Cranes.
  3. Open /hooks, review Cranes’s hooks, and trust them. Codex doesn’t run a plugin’s hooks until you do.
  4. Sign in for the hooks: in a terminal, run python3 pikespeak/plugins/codex/cranes/scripts/cranes.py login. If Codex installed the plugin somewhere else, the plugin’s first message in a session prints the exact command. Your browser opens Cranes; choose what it may use and choose Allow. This sign-in is shared with the Cranes plugins for Claude Code and Cursor on your computer.
  5. Start a new session. The first time Codex uses Cranes’s tools, it asks you to sign in to them too.

Your skills are copied into ~/.agents/skills, each named cranes- and the skill’s name. A copy you edit is never overwritten; Codex offers to save your edit back to Cranes. If a skill doesn’t appear, restart Codex.

Only the connection

  1. In a terminal, run:

    codex mcp add cranes --url https://usecranes.com/connect/mcp

    Connect your AI in Cranes has this command with a copy button, on the Codex card.

  2. If Codex doesn’t send you to sign in on its own, run codex mcp login cranes.

  3. Sign in to Cranes in your browser, choose what Codex may use, and choose Allow.

No client ID, secret, or key is needed. To make Codex call Cranes more reliably in a repository, add the line under Have your AI use Cranes on its own to its AGENTS.md. See When Cranes comes in.

Before a change that’s hard to undo, Cranes asks through Codex’s own prompt when Codex offers one, and otherwise in the conversation.

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