Release notes are where you find out what a tool is actually becoming. Here are the last three from OpenAI’s Codex CLI, taken from its GitHub releases. The release pages show dates (October 7, 8 and 9) but not the year, so I’m assuming 2026 from context.

rust-v0.161.0 (October 7)

  • New default model: the notes say “GPT-6.1 Sol is now the default model in the bundled and Amazon Bedrock catalogs.”
  • Amazon Bedrock: multi-agent V2 and Ultra reasoning on compatible models, and Bedrock Mantle accepts AWS GovCloud regions.
  • /mcp login <name> lets you sign in to an MCP server from a running terminal session.
  • Voice: you can choose a microphone, speaker and input channel, saved locally.
  • A fix so that approved filesystem escalation can grant broader write access while still preserving denied reads and network restrictions.
  • Permissions you launch with now persist across terminal reconnects and new sessions.

rust-v0.162.0 (October 8)

  • Managed Git worktree tools for creating and listing worktrees from trusted local projects, when the worktrees feature is enabled.
  • Pinning tasks in the agent Command Center with p.
  • Transcript tools: /copy, Ctrl+Insert for copying a selection, and a tui.mouse_scroll_speed setting.
  • Clickable URLs in many prompts, warnings and banners, including ones that wrap across lines.
  • Custom providers: live web access and remote compaction settings for Responses-compatible model providers.
  • Opt-in ranked tool search in Code Mode.
  • apply_patch now preserves CRLF line endings, plus several Linux and Windows sandbox fixes and a signed PowerShell installer.

rust-v0.162.1 (October 9)

A small patch: it fixes a terminal-UI crash when asynchronous questions contain multiple lines, and startup failures caused by a mismatch between a running background server’s feature settings and the CLI defaults.

What caught my eye

Two things, honestly. First, worktree support is the same idea other tools have been adding for running several agents at once without them overwriting each other’s files, which I mentioned in the Cline SDK coverage earlier. Second, the sandbox fixes keep leaning toward “if you denied something, it stays denied,” which matches what I noticed in the Claude Code permissions post. Permission handling seems to be where every agent is spending its effort this month.

A naming puzzle

OpenAI’s own GPT-6 announcement names “GPT-6 Sol” and says the models behind Work and Codex are unchanged. The Codex notes name “GPT-6.1 Sol” as the default in its catalogs. I can’t tell from the sources whether that’s a separate model, a catalog label, or just inconsistent naming, so I’d check codex itself after updating to see what it actually selects.

Also, one of the new options, --enable cli_daybreak, is opt-in and the notes don’t explain it, so I’m leaving it alone.

Sources: openai/codex v0.161.0, v0.162.0, v0.162.1.