The outcome

Deliver one reviewable change without letting agent autonomy outrun repository policy or human understanding.

Step by step

A workflow you can repeat.

  1. 01

    Create a clean branch, inspect status and nested AGENTS.md files, and record baseline behavior and trusted validation commands.

  2. 02

    Describe the goal, relevant context, constraints, non-goals, acceptance criteria, protected paths, and observable definition of done.

  3. 03

    Use Plan mode to resolve architecture and product questions, then authorize only the filesystem, commands, network domains, and tools the accepted plan needs.

  4. 04

    Monitor edits and commands, reject unrelated cleanup or scope expansion, and ask Codex to explain important tradeoffs and unexpected failures.

  5. 05

    Run trusted checks independently, inspect every changed file and the complete diff, and ship through normal peer review with a rollback point.

Working standard

What good use looks like.

  • Make done observable.
  • Keep authority smaller than the task boundary.
  • Trust the diff and checks, not the summary.

Official references

Check the current product documentation.