ide/features.md Codex Docs, 2026-02-19 20:37 UTC → 2026-03-23 18:22 UTC

1# Codex IDE extension features1# Codex IDE extension features

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3What you can do with the Codex IDE extension

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5The Codex IDE extension gives you access to Codex directly in VS Code, Cursor, Windsurf, and other VS Code-compatible editors. It uses the same agent as the Codex CLI and shares the same configuration.3The Codex IDE extension gives you access to Codex directly in VS Code, Cursor, Windsurf, and other VS Code-compatible editors. It uses the same agent as the Codex CLI and shares the same configuration.

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7## Prompting Codex5## Prompting Codex

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60## Web search58## Web search

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62Codex ships with a first-party web search tool. For local tasks in the Codex IDE Extension, Codex enables web search by default and serves results from a web search cache. The cache is an OpenAI-maintained index of web results, so cached mode returns pre-indexed results instead of fetching live pages. This reduces exposure to prompt injection from arbitrary live content, but you should still treat web results as untrusted. If you configure your sandbox for [full access](https://developers.openai.com/codex/security), web search defaults to live results. See [Config basics](https://developers.openai.com/codex/config-basic) to disable web search or switch to live results that fetch the most recent data.60Codex ships with a first-party web search tool. For local tasks in the Codex IDE Extension, Codex enables web search by default and serves results from a web search cache. The cache is an OpenAI-maintained index of web results, so cached mode returns pre-indexed results instead of fetching live pages. This reduces exposure to prompt injection from arbitrary live content, but you should still treat web results as untrusted. If you configure your sandbox for [full access](https://developers.openai.com/codex/agent-approvals-security), web search defaults to live results. See [Config basics](https://developers.openai.com/codex/config-basic) to disable web search or switch to live results that fetch the most recent data.

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64You'll see `web_search` items in the transcript or `codex exec --json` output whenever Codex looks something up.62You'll see `web_search` items in the transcript or `codex exec --json` output whenever Codex looks something up.

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72## See also70## See also

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74- [Codex IDE extension settings](https://developers.openai.com/codex/ide/settings)72- [Codex IDE extension settings](https://developers.openai.com/codex/ide/settings)

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76[Previous

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78Overview](https://developers.openai.com/codex/ide)[Next

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80Settings](https://developers.openai.com/codex/ide/settings)