Intent Formation helps Codex follow what you want as you see results and change your mind. Clear tasks continue normally. When a choice genuinely changes the next useful action, Codex asks one focused question, shows two or three concrete directions, or makes a tiny sample you can react to. With local state enabled, short sourced records retain the current goal and distinguish fixing the work from changing the goal.
There is no form to fill in and no separate chat app. Talk to Codex as usual.
Research snapshot, not a v0.3 release: the natural-feedback/state connection is implemented and the candidate passed all 18 cross-platform CI jobs. The final confirmation attempted 160 conversations but produced only 79/80 usable pairs; its diagnostic final-match gain was 1.58 percentage points against the unchanged 10-point gate. This development round is closed without another replacement study or a v0.3 prerelease. Public source is available; efficacy is not established. See the complete results, current goals and release decision.
- “Translate this paragraph.” → Codex translates it directly.
- “Design the product so it feels premium.” → If plausible meanings would produce materially different work, Codex asks one useful tradeoff question.
- “I know this screen is wrong, but I cannot describe why.” → Codex shows a few small alternatives so you can point to what fits.
- “The button is broken; keep the design.” → Codex treats that as an implementation correction, not a new preference.
The product stays inside the current task. Codex still owns planning, tools, permissions, implementation, testing, and delivery.
The commands below are a future v0.3.0-beta.1 release reference, not a current quick-install path. No v0.3 tag or installer was published after the failed confirmation. The existing v0.2 downloads belong to the earlier product and do not provide this complete capability. Check Releases before installing anything.
Prerequisites: Codex CLI and Node.js 20 or newer on PATH.
Copy these two commands into a terminal:
codex plugin marketplace add rrrrrredy/intent-loop --ref v0.3.0-beta.1
codex plugin add intent-formation@intent-loopStart a new Codex task. Review the plugin Hook when Codex asks. The core plugin receives no prompt text through its MCP tool and writes no intent records.
This core-only mode supplies interaction guidance without persistent continuity. Give Codex a task in your own words. To retain the evolving goal across processes, enable State below.
Install the State companion only when you want a small task-local record that can survive compaction or a later process:
codex plugin add intent-formation-state@intent-loopStart a new task, review the two local Hooks, then type:
/intent start
Once enabled, continue in ordinary language: “Keep the purpose; fix the spacing,” or “I changed my mind; make it for volunteers.” The development Hook supplies existing records and the current turn reference; Codex uses the existing MCP tools to save material changes. You do not need to copy record IDs for normal feedback. Two targeted synthetic cases exercised this path in six real host turns, including a fresh-process resume and a non-activated task. This is implementation evidence, not measured user benefit or a released capability; see the source-bound observations.
Use /intent show to check what was actually retained and /intent off to stop. The remaining controls are optional explicit overrides:
| Message | Effect |
|---|---|
/intent remember <one short goal> |
In standard mode, save one explicit goal with a receipt; constraint:, preference:, success:, and tradeoff: prefixes are optional. |
/intent show |
Show the active task records and their source. |
/intent correct <record-id> => <replacement> |
After show, copy the record ID and replace its current statement; the old record remains auditable. |
/intent export |
Write an integrity-checked JSON export and report its opaque export ID and SHA-256. |
/intent private |
Purge persisted task content; new record text lives only in the current MCP process. |
/intent off |
Stop implicit intent intervention and state updates for this task. |
/intent forget |
Physically purge this task from plugin-managed state and managed exports. |
/intent off is confirmed only when the reviewed State UserPromptSubmit Hook returns an IF-... receipt. Noninteractive codex exec cannot perform Codex's Hook review; do not treat its model-only fallback as an off switch. Release automation uses the bypass flag only after reviewing the exact packaged Hook.
Successful controls return a short receipt such as IF-12AB34CD. No receipt means no success claim.
Exports are stored under <CODEX_HOME>/plugin-data/intent-formation/exports/<export-id>. The plugin does not place an absolute local path into model context.
The reported SHA-256 is the structured content digest, not the hash of the complete formatted file. Import verifies it automatically; see export verification for the exact calculation.
After /intent start, Codex may save short atomic paraphrases of material user goals and feedback; the ordinary-prompt Hook only reads existing state and does not parse or persist the prompt. Complete prompts, transcripts, assistant responses, workspace files, and tool output must not be copied into records. This content-minimization rule relies on the host for semantic writes; personal information deliberately placed in a statement can still remain. This is not a secret vault or general DLP system. On Unix-like systems, managed directories/files use 0700/0600; Windows relies on the current account's inherited filesystem ACLs.
Local storage is not local-only processing: enabled State supplies selected records to Codex as context, where the host and configured model provider may process them. The plugin has no direct upload or telemetry client.
The trusted short-lived Hook refuses private remember, feedback, show, and correction commands: it cannot retain writes or retrieve another process's private memory. Private records can still be managed through the State MCP tools and last only for that MCP process. Private mode never stores a custom task title or workspace hash. Returning to standard mode with /intent start restores the reliable slash-command path.
See the plain-language Chinese guide, privacy policy, and threat model.
The repository also contains dsh-intent-formation, a thin adapter for the official DeepSeek Harness developer preview. It shares the exact interaction policy and exposes the optional state tools through a session-bound local MCP process. Setting a session to off removes the policy on the next Harness system-prompt assembly, including after adapter restart.
The new Codex UserPromptSubmit continuity connection is not a claim of equivalent natural-feedback behavior in DeepSeek. The adapter's current claim remains compatibility and local tool lifecycle.
dsh plugin --profile headless add github:rrrrrredy/intent-loop#v0.3.0-beta.1DeepSeek Harness currently requires Node.js ^22.19.0 or >=24.0.0 and pnpm. The adapter is pinned to Harness 0.1.2-rc.1; prerelease API changes may require a new Intent Formation prerelease. See dsh/README.md.
An earlier 80-scenario run is preserved as a development regression. Because the policy was iterated against that corpus, its strong result is not used as release-efficacy evidence.
The development ablation report records which policy and architecture elements were removed, which removals caused real Hook failures, and the observed model boundary. It is also excluded from release-efficacy claims.
The independently sealed v6 holdout was run to completion and returned STOP: clear-task paired latency, wrong-intervention rate, and inference-denial rate missed their fixed thresholds. A post-run audit also found at least eleven scenarios whose final-match checklist contained facts absent from the user-visible turns, so the run is retained only as a failed diagnostic, never as efficacy evidence.
The v7 primary run produced 155 usable conversations out of 160, leaving 75 complete pairs. Four explicit model-capacity failures and one timeout were retained without primary replacement. The available-pair diagnostic is ineligible for release and also retains failed inference-denial and premature-action gates. A separate case audit distinguishes real rule-selection and delivery-scope problems from hindsight grading; original scores remain unchanged.
The prerelease remains blocked while the failure-derived revision is tested and ablated. Publication requires a newly authored, hash-sealed holdout whose every outcome requirement is an exact excerpt from a user-visible turn and whose follow-up does not introduce hidden first-turn delivery obligations, run verbatim in an isolated Codex Home against one clean candidate commit, with explicit model settings, full plugin-tree fingerprints, randomized blind grading, and every predeclared gate passing. DeepSeek support has a separate compatibility and lifecycle gate; a Codex outcome result will not be presented as DeepSeek efficacy.
Source and packaging checks run on Windows, Ubuntu, and macOS with supported Node versions. The release gate requires all 18 jobs to pass: 9 Codex package combinations, 6 DeepSeek adapter combinations, and a real temporary DeepSeek package/add/compose/boot-help/remove lifecycle on all three operating systems. Native GUI behavior is outside this headless claim.
If State is installed and you want its current task data removed, run /intent forget first and keep the receipt. Close Codex tasks using these plugins, then run:
codex plugin remove intent-formation-state@intent-loop
codex plugin remove intent-formation@intent-loop
codex plugin marketplace remove intent-loopOn Windows, if removal reports a file in use or os error 32, exit the Codex app and retry from a separate terminal. An active MCP process can hold the installed directory open. Do not delete the source checkout or terminate unrelated Node processes.
For DeepSeek Harness:
dsh plugin --profile headless remove dsh-intent-formationRemoving a package does not remove operating-system backups or exports copied outside the managed plugin-data directory.
Users of the older Intent Loop v0.2 beta should read the v0.2 migration note. This release deliberately does not import old state silently.
cd packages/intent-formation
npm ci
npm test
cd ../..
npm ci
npm testThe core build creates exact, dependency-contained Codex distributions in plugins/intent-formation and plugins/intent-formation-state. The root suite verifies published study hashes, DeepSeek tool generation, credential isolation, real MCP behavior, and the exact package allowlist.
See CONTRIBUTING.md, SECURITY.md, and the release evidence report.
Apache License 2.0. You may use, modify, and redistribute the project, including commercially, while retaining the required license and notices. The license includes an explicit patent grant. See LICENSE and the package-specific third-party notices.