ak codex-agent-runtime serve

Exposes each discovered kit or user agent as an MCP tool named agent_<slug>. Codex invokes a tool and the runtime spawns codex exec with the agent's system prompt plus user prompt, then returns the result. Cold-start cost: each dispatch spawns a fresh codex exec subprocess (roughly 1-3s per call); a warm/long-lived runtime is a tracked mitigation.

Who it's for: Power devs running the Codex adapter or scripting doctor/CI checks.

When to use it: Codex starts this automatically when registered via ak codex-agent-runtime register. Use --list-only to enumerate discovered agents without starting the MCP transport.

What changes on disk: Read-only. Does not write to disk; starts a long-running MCP stdio server that dispatches to codex exec subprocesses. Use it for scripted doctor/CI checks with --list-only.

Usage

ak codex-agent-runtime serve [flags]

Examples

ak codex-agent-runtime serve                                                      # start MCP server on stdio
ak codex-agent-runtime serve --list-only                                         # print agents and exit without serving
ak codex-agent-runtime serve --list-only --codex-home ~/.codex --plugin-root ~/.claude/plugins # override both dirs

Flags

Flag	Description
`--codex-home string`	Override $CODEX_HOME (defaults to ~/.codex)
`-h, --help`	help for serve
`--json`	Emit machine-readable JSON (implies --no-interactive)
`--list-only`	Print discovered agents and exit without serving MCP
`--no-interactive`	Disable interactive prompts (CI-safe)
`--plugin-root string`	Override $AGENTKIT_PLUGIN_DIR (defaults to ~/.claude/plugins)
`-q, --quiet`	Suppress non-error output on stderr
`-V, --verbose`	Extra diagnostic output on stderr (loses to --quiet)
`-y, --yes`	Assume yes for all prompts

Output modes

Mode	Behavior
`pretty`	default on TTY (colors, ASCII markers)
`plain`	auto when stdout piped or --no-interactive
`json`	--json (single-object envelope, NDJSON-safe)

Exit codes

Code	Meaning
`0`	success
`1`	runtime error
`2`	invalid flags
`3`	user-cancel (SIGINT, prompt-cancel)
`1`	MCP transport error or agent discovery failure

ak codex-agent-runtime — Codex agent MCP dispatch runtime.