Oxide

Rust-native AI coding agent — like Codex/Claude Code, but every feature owned and built in house. One reusable engine drives both a terminal UI and a desktop GUI; behavior is updated through pluggable harnesses without recompiling the engine.

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Highlights

• One engine, two frontends — a frontend-agnostic core (Op in / Event out) powers a Dioxus desktop GUI and a ratatui TUI. Adding a UI means writing one more Frontend, never touching the engine.
• Bring your own login, no API key — drive your already-authenticated codex / claude CLIs, or use your ChatGPT subscription directly (reads ~/.codex/auth.json, hits the Responses backend — no CLI spawn, fast).
• Orchestration — two-stage plan → implement → review with an auto-fix loop (re-implements until the reviewer signs off), plus parallel sub-agents (fan a plan out to N backends, then synthesize).
• Slash commands — /review, /test, /commit, … as .oxide/commands/*.md templates with $ARGUMENTS.
• Skills browser — aggregates every skill from Codex (~/.codex/plugins), Claude Code (~/.claude/skills) and Oxide.
• Lifecycle hooks — pre_tool (can block), post_tool, stop shell commands via .oxide/hooks.toml.
• Diff review — every file write shown as a colored unified diff with one-click Revert (checkpoint rewind).
• MCP client — connect external tool servers; tools surface as mcp__<server>__<tool> through the same approval/sandbox path.
• Persistent memory + self-improvement — remember / save_skill tools write durable memory under .oxide/memory.
• OTA self-update — checks a GitHub repo's latest release, downloads the macOS asset, swaps the binary, restarts.
• Packaged — scripts/make-dmg.sh builds a signed Oxide.app + Oxide.dmg.

Architecture

A frontend-agnostic engine that speaks only Op (in) and Event (out). Every UI is a thin shell.

  frontend ──Op──▶   [ oxide-core engine ]   ──Event──▶ frontend
  (GUI / TUI / RPC)        │      │
                    Harness │      │ Provider (streaming)
                 (prompt+tools)    │
                            ToolRouter ──▶ hooks ──▶ approval ──▶ sandbox

Crates

Crate	Role
oxide-protocol	Wire types: Op, Event, ToolSpec, policies. The contract.
oxide-core	The engine: async submit/event loop, ToolRouter chokepoint, orchestration, hooks, commands, memory.
oxide-harness	Pluggable behavior packs (prompt + tools + loop policy). Builtins default, hermes; external via TOML manifest.
oxide-providers	Streaming providers: OpenAI + Anthropic APIs, codex/claude CLI drivers, ChatGPT-subscription backend.
oxide-mcp	MCP client — consume external tool servers over stdio JSON-RPC.
oxide-config	Layered TOML config (defaults → ~/.config/oxide → project ./oxide.toml).
oxide-frontend	The Frontend trait every UI implements.
oxide-tui	Terminal UI (ratatui + crossterm).
oxide-gui	Desktop GUI (Dioxus) — Codex-style command center over the same engine.
oxide-cli	The oxide binary / subcommand dispatcher.

Providers

--provider	Auth	Notes
chatgpt	~/.codex/auth.json (Sign in with ChatGPT)	Direct Responses backend — no CLI spawn, fastest. Uses your Plus/Pro plan.
codex	local codex login	Spawns Codex CLI (its own tools/sandbox). 272k context.
claude	local claude login	Spawns Claude Code. Opus, 1M context.
openai	OPENAI_API_KEY	Hand-rolled reqwest + SSE.
anthropic	ANTHROPIC_API_KEY	Hand-rolled reqwest + SSE.

The chatgpt provider reuses the same OAuth token Codex stores and calls an internal endpoint (the same one Codex uses). It works but is not officially documented for third-party use — fine for personal use, can break if the endpoint changes. For the fully-sanctioned path use --provider codex.

CLI binaries are resolved even from a minimal PATH (Finder launch) by probing ~/.superconductor/bin, ~/.local/bin, Homebrew, etc. — override with OXIDE_CODEX_BIN / OXIDE_CLAUDE_BIN.

Build & run

cargo build
cargo test                                  # engine loop, providers, tools, sandbox, commands…

# Desktop GUI — permissions bypassed by default, opens the Open-folder welcome on first run:
./target/debug/oxide gui

# Interactive TUI:
./target/debug/oxide tui
./target/debug/oxide --harness hermes tui
./target/debug/oxide --safe --provider claude tui     # re-enable approval prompts

# Headless single turn:
./target/debug/oxide --provider chatgpt exec "summarize this repo"
./target/debug/oxide --provider codex   exec --yes "add a unit test for the parser"

./target/debug/oxide harness list

Orchestration

Enable in Settings → Orchestrate. Each turn becomes:

1. 🧭 Plan — front provider produces a numbered plan (shown in the thinking box).
2. ⚙ Implement — backend provider executes it (or 🤖 sub-agents fan the steps out in parallel, then 🧩 synthesize).
3. 🔍 Review → 🔁 Fix — reviewer replies DONE / GAPS; on gaps the backend re-implements, looping up to 3×.

Front/backend are any providers — e.g. plan with Opus, implement with Codex. Oxide drives the sequence, so it works even with the black-box CLI providers.

Extending

• Slash commands — drop .oxide/commands/name.md (YAML frontmatter description: + body with $ARGUMENTS). Type / in the composer.
• Hooks — .oxide/hooks.toml: pre_tool = ["./guard.sh"] (non-zero exit blocks), post_tool = ["cargo fmt"], stop = ["cargo test"]. Payload JSON in $OXIDE_HOOK_PAYLOAD.
• Harnesses — drop a *.toml manifest into harness_dir to add/update behavior without recompiling.
• MCP — add [[mcp_servers]] entries in oxide.toml.

Install (macOS)

Download Oxide.dmg from Releases, open it, and drag Oxide.app to Applications.

The app is ad-hoc signed, not notarized, so on first launch macOS Gatekeeper shows "Apple could not verify Oxide…". Clear the quarantine flag once:

xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/Oxide.app

…then open it normally. (Alternatively: System Settings → Privacy & Security → Open Anyway.)

Packaging (macOS)

bash scripts/make-dmg.sh        # → dist/Oxide.dmg (release build + Oxide.app + icns + dmg)

Set a GitHub repo in Settings → Updates (owner/name). Each release the app reads releases/latest, picks the macOS asset, and offers a one-click Update & restart. To publish:

bash scripts/make-dmg.sh
cp target/release/oxide oxide-macos-arm64
gh release create v0.0.2 dist/Oxide.dmg oxide-macos-arm64

macOS-only for now (Linux/Windows later).

License

MIT OR Apache-2.0.