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Thread binding rules for ordinary and supervised Codex sessions, including safe continuation from an existing native thread. Part of the Codex harness runtime guide; Where each section moved lists every section.

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Thread bindings and model changes

When an OpenClaw session is attached to an existing Codex thread, the next turn resends the currently selected model, approval policy, sandbox, approvals reviewer, and service tier to app-server. Switching from openai/gpt-5.5 to openai/gpt-5.2 keeps the thread binding but asks Codex to continue with the newly selected model. Supervised bindings are the exception. The OpenClaw model picker stays locked, and resumes omit model and provider overrides so Codex restores the canonical thread’s persisted model and provider. A separate native Codex control can change that persisted pair, and the initial snapshot can produce Codex’s normal model-difference warning; the outer OpenClaw model and fallback chain never substitute for either.

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Supervision and safe continuation

Codex supervision is an opt-in capability of the same codex plugin. It discovers native threads through a separate connection and projects only non-archived sessions into the Gateway catalog. Without explicit appServer connection settings, that connection uses managed user-home stdio while the ordinary harness remains agent-scoped. Listing and metadata reads are passive: they do not resume a thread, subscribe OpenClaw to its live events, or answer its approvals. For a stored or idle session on the Gateway computer, Continue as branch creates a normal, model-locked Chat and mirrors bounded user and assistant history through the source’s last terminal persisted turn. The first normal Chat turn installs the real approval handlers and uses an ephemeral native fork to pin the snapshot without a model or provider override. Codex App Server uses its current native configuration and returns the selected pair; it emits its normal warning if that model differs from the source’s last recorded model. OpenClaw confirms the fork’s subscription is released before starting the canonical appServer-source Codex harness thread under its cwd and runtime policy with exactly the returned model and provider for that initial start. It then injects the bounded visible history and commits the binding on the same supervision connection. The probe is never persisted or archived. The source is never resumed. The canonical thread has the full OpenClaw harness tool surface; reasoning, tool calls, and tool results from the source are not cloned into it. The private connection scope survives pending and committed binding states, so every later turn remains on that connection with native auth and provider configuration. Disabled supervision or binding/connection drift fails closed rather than switching to the ordinary agent-home harness. The original CLI, VS Code, Atlas, or ChatGPT source remains eligible for both catalogs. The canonical branch is a native Codex thread, but its source kind is appServer; native clients may filter that source kind, so its appearance in Codex Desktop is not guaranteed. Active sources cannot start a new branch or be archived; an existing supervised Chat can still be opened. notLoaded means activity is unknown, not idle; OpenClaw allows archive for a local idle or notLoaded row only after explicit no-other-runner confirmation and a fresh process-local status read. Codex serializes thread mutations within one App Server process but does not provide an exclusive cross-process runner or approval-owner lease, so that read cannot prove that another process is not using the thread. OpenClaw blocks a known active binding owner for the exact target or any non-archived spawned descendant returned by Codex’s paginated descendant query. Enumeration errors, cycles, and safety-limit exhaustion fail closed. Native archive can still race a new turn in another process, so confirmation covers unknown clients and the gap between status read and archive. A supervised model-locked Chat cannot be deleted while it protects the native binding. Paired-node catalogs expose bounded, paginated transcripts. Eligible stored or idle rows can also create or reopen a model-locked Chat when the connected node advertises and permits the catalog list, transcript read, and codex.cli.session.resume commands, and the operator has operator.admin. Later messages resume the exact native thread through the node’s Codex CLI and return its final text; this is not the Gateway-local branch flow or a streaming App Server harness bridge. Nodes without those capabilities remain readable without continuation, and paired-node archive remains unavailable. See paired-node limits. See Codex supervision for operator setup and the visible Control UI behavior.