How to share a Codex CLI session

For slink 0.9.0 · updated 2026-10-09.

Run slink view --from codex in a project to read a Codex session in your browser, then publish the part you choose as an end-to-end encrypted link. The session is the rollout Codex already saves: your messages, its answers, the shell commands, patches and their results. Nothing is uploaded until you publish, and the person you send the link to needs only a browser.

Read the session

slink view --from codex

slink finds the session history Codex keeps under ~/.codex/sessions, or under CODEX_HOME when that is set, and picks out the sessions started in this project. It takes a snapshot of the one you choose and opens it in a local web reader. No account is needed.

The reader opens on your latest message and the answer to it. The tool calls, their results and any recorded reasoning sit collapsed under each answer as Agent activity, and search covers one exchange or the whole session. Read a session in the user guide describes the reader in full. Install has the three ways to get slink.

In the reader, choose Share this view. The panel starts with your message and the agent's answer and shows exactly what will be shared. Add a title and a comment if the reader will need them, then choose Publish link and who can open it: anyone with the link, or up to ten people by email address.

From the terminal, this publishes the newest Codex session for the project, whole, after showing it and asking:

slink share --from codex

To share one passage and not the whole transcript, select the text in the reader and choose Comment and share. Share in the user guide covers each step.

What a Codex session contains

The session is labelled Reconstructed, because it is read from the rollout file and not recorded on the wire.
Function calls, apply_patch, local shell commands, tool search and web search appear as tool calls in the order Codex recorded them. Any other rollout item is kept as it was written.
A sub-agent thread appears under the spawn_agent call that started it.
Rollouts compressed to .jsonl.zst are not found. Codex 0.160.1 writes them only behind a flag that is off by default.

slink is checked against Codex 0.160.1. The handoff design lists the evidence and the limits.

Why slink record captures nothing from Codex

slink record and the always-on recorder route a program through a local recorder by setting OPENAI_BASE_URL. Codex does not read that variable, so the recorder reports captured 0 LLM calls. You do not need to record Codex: its saved sessions read normally with slink view --from codex.

Privacy

Reading sends nothing. The reader runs on your own machine.
A share is encrypted on your machine with its own AES-256-GCM key before upload. The server stores ciphertext.
Before upload the session is scanned for common credential formats, and a match stops the publish. This is a safety net, not a guarantee.
slink delete with the link takes a share offline.

Privacy and security has the detail.

Questions

Does the person I send it to need Codex or slink?

No. They open the link in a browser.

Is my session uploaded when I run slink view?

No. slink view reads the files on your disk and serves the reader from your own machine. Uploading happens only when you choose Publish link or run slink share.

Can I open one particular Codex session?

Yes. Pass its ID or the path of its rollout file with --session. A wrong or ambiguous ID is an error, never a guess.