🤖 Codex Guard

August 27, 2026 · View on GitHub

GitHub release (latest by SemVer) GitHub stars License

Docs site: https://akimiya-z.github.io/codex-guard

An automatic quality gate for AI-generated pull requests. Stop TODO leftovers, leaked secrets, sloppy commits and red CI from reaching main — with zero review bandwidth spent on the obvious stuff.

Works with OpenAI Codex (cloud & CLI), Claude Code, Copilot, and any other agent that opens PRs against your repo.

🐕 Dogfooding: this repo gates its own AI-generated PRs. See a real failing example on PR #6 and the workflow behind it in .github/workflows/codex-guard.yml.

Why

AI coding agents are great at writing code and terrible at cleaning up after themselves. In practice, agent-written PRs tend to arrive with the same handful of problems:

// TODO: handle this comments that were never meant to stay
Hardcoded API keys and connection strings copied from a chat transcript
Commit trails like WIP, fix stuff, more changes — squashed versions of a messy session
A green-looking PR that actually has failing CI on the head commit

You shouldn't need a human reviewer to catch those every single time. Codex Guard checks the boring, deterministic things automatically, and only on PRs that look AI-generated — so human attention goes where it matters.

How it works

Codex Guard runs on pull_request, figures out whether the PR looks agent-generated (via label, branch prefix, or title), and then:

Check	What it flags
🧹 TODO scan	`TODO` / `FIXME` / `XXX` / `HACK` / `WIP` markers on added lines only
🔐 Secret scan	AWS (access + secret keys), GitHub, Google, OpenAI, Anthropic, Slack, Stripe, npm, SendGrid, Telegram, Azure connection strings, JWTs, hardcoded credentials, connection strings (values are redacted in reports)
💬 Commit hygiene	Subjects that don't match conventional commits, empty subjects
🧪 CI status	Failing status checks or check runs on the PR head commit

Each finding is posted as a GitHub check-run annotation at the exact file and line, plus a human-readable summary comment on the PR.

Honest content-scan coverage

GitHub sometimes omits the textual patch for binary or very large files. Codex Guard now distinguishes no findings from not scanned: every report shows the number of eligible changed files whose patches were actually inspected. A missing patch produces a neutral, non-blocking coverage warning with the affected paths; the JSON and Action outputs carry the same information. The warning also appears when GitHub's pull-request files API reaches its documented 3,000-file limit.

The output below comes from a real run on this repo (PR #6) — a deliberate test PR from a codex/ branch that left a TODO, credential-shaped fixtures and two sloppy commits. Secret-shaped values are redacted here just as they are in current reports:

## 🤖 Codex Guard

❌ **Checks failed — review the findings before merging.**

| Check | Result |
| --- | --- |
| TODO / FIXME scan | ⚠️ 2 |
| Secret scan | ⚠️ 3 |
| Commit hygiene | ⚠️ 2 |
| CI status | ✅ |

**Unfinished work**
- `scripts/sync.js:4` — `FIXME`: const aws = 'AKIA...MPLE'; // FIXME: move this to a secret store
- `scripts/sync.js:2` — `TODO`: // TODO: wire up real retry with exponential backoff.
**Potential leaked secrets**
- `scripts/sync.js:4` — AWS Access Key ID `AKIA...MPLE`
- `scripts/sync.js:5` — Connection string `post...prod`
- `scripts/sync.js:7` — OpenAI API Key `sk-p...6789`
**Commit hygiene**
- `7c84ae1` — _WIP stuff_ (by Akimiya-z)
- `1affcf8` — _tmp_ (by Akimiya-z)

> Detected as an AI-generated PR (branch prefix "codex/").

Quick start

From the root of your Git repository:

npx --yes codex-guard init
git add .github/workflows/codex-guard.yml
git commit -m "ci: add Codex Guard"

The installer starts in observe mode: findings are annotated, but they do not fail the workflow while you tune the policy. Three setup presets keep the rollout explicit:

Preset	Command	Behavior
Observe	`npx --yes codex-guard init`	Report everything without blocking.
Balanced	`npx --yes codex-guard init --preset balanced`	Block secrets, commit hygiene, and red CI; warn on unfinished markers.
Strict	`npx --yes codex-guard init --preset strict`	Block every default finding. `--strict` remains an alias.

Prefer to add it by hand? The generated workflow is:

# Generated by codex-guard init
name: Codex Guard
on:
  pull_request:

permissions:
  contents: read
  statuses: read
  pull-requests: write
  checks: write

jobs:
  codex-guard:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: Akimiya-z/codex-guard@v1
        with:
          preset: 'observe'

That's it. Codex Guard now reports on matching PRs without blocking them.

Upgrading an existing workflow? Add statuses: read to its permissions block. checks: write already includes read access for check runs. Without status access, Codex Guard reports incomplete CI visibility and returns a neutral result instead of claiming every check is green.

One-click from the GitHub Actions Marketplace.

Turn on enforcement

After a few representative PRs, choose how strongly to enforce:

- uses: Akimiya-z/codex-guard@v1
  with:
    preset: 'balanced' # or 'strict'

balanced warns on unfinished markers while blocking secrets, commit hygiene, and red CI. strict blocks every default finding. For a custom mix, use fail-on and the individual inputs. Then require the status check under Settings → Branches → Require status checks → Codex Guard. A blocking finding will prevent the PR from merging until it is resolved (or the PR is marked with an ignore label — see "Opting out").

Detecting agent PRs

By default Codex Guard only gates PRs it believes were written by an agent, so human-authored PRs are never slowed down:

Label matches one of codex-generated, agentic, ai-generated
Branch starts with codex/, copilot/, claude-auto, gh-codex/
Title contains Generated by Codex, Generated by Claude, Generated by Copilot

All of these are configurable — or set gate-agents-only: false to gate every PR.

Opting out of a specific PR

Add a label named codex-guard-ignore (configurable) to a PR and Codex Guard will pass it without running checks. Useful when a human has already reviewed and accepted the changes.

Inputs

Input	Default	Description
`preset`	(empty)	Policy baseline: `observe`, `balanced`, or `strict`. Empty preserves the pre-preset behavior. Repository policy can override it.
`github-token`	`${{ github.token }}`	Token with write access to checks and PRs.
`gate-agents-only`	`true`	Only gate PRs detected as agent-generated.
`agent-labels`	`codex-generated,agentic,ai-generated`	Labels marking an agent PR.
`agent-branch-prefixes`	`codex/,copilot/,claude-auto,gh-codex/`	Branch prefixes marking an agent PR.
`agent-keywords`	`Generated by Codex,Generated by Claude,Generated by Copilot`	Title keywords marking an agent PR.
`ignore-label`	`codex-guard-ignore`	PR label that skips all checks.
`check-todos`	`true`	Scan added lines for unfinished-work markers.
`todo-patterns`	`TODO,FIXME,XXX,HACK,WIP`	Markers to flag.
`todo-blocking`	`true`	Fail on TODO findings (`false` = warn only).
`check-secrets`	`true`	Scan added lines for hardcoded secrets.
`secret-exclude-paths`	(empty)	File path substrings to skip (e.g. `README,test/fixtures`).
`check-commits`	`true`	Validate commit subjects.
`commit-pattern`	conventional commit regex	Regex subjects must match.
`check-ci`	`true`	Fail on failing CI for the head commit.
`ignore-check-run-names`	(empty)	Check/context names to ignore when assessing CI.
`post-comment`	`true`	Post a report comment on failures.
`comment-mode`	`replace`	`replace` updates the previous report in place (one comment per PR), `append` posts a new one each run, `none` never posts.
`request-changes`	`false`	Also submit a formal `REQUEST_CHANGES` review on blocking findings (opt-in; needs `pull-requests: write`).
`notify-users`	(empty)	Comma-separated usernames to @-mention in the report comment on blocking findings.
`soft-fail`	`false`	Report findings with a neutral check-run but never fail the workflow.
`config-path`	`.github/codex-guard.yml`	Optional per-repo policy file (on the default branch) overriding workflow inputs.
`fail-on`	(empty)	Comma-separated blocking checks: `todos,secrets,commits,ci`. Empty = legacy behavior; a subset makes excluded checks non-blocking.
`sweep`	`false`	Scan every open agent PR instead of a single one (use with `workflow_dispatch`).
`sweep-label`	(empty)	Only sweep PRs carrying this label.
`sweep-base`	`main`	Only sweep PRs targeting this base branch.

CI results are never guessed

Codex Guard reads both commit statuses and check runs, follows every results page up to GitHub's 3,000-result safety cap, and treats every completed non-success conclusion as a failure. Pending checks produce a neutral result, not a premature green check. If one GitHub CI API is unavailable, the report is neutral and explicitly says visibility is incomplete; if both are unavailable, the CI check fails closed. Previous Codex Guard check runs are ignored so a rerun cannot inherit its own old failure.

Configuration file

AGENTS.md-aware: if the repository's AGENTS.md or CLAUDE.md states a commit convention as a backticked regex (e.g. "commits must match ^JIRA-[0-9]+: .+$"), Codex Guard applies it as a last-resort default when no commit-pattern input or config key is set — action and CLI both.

Every input above can be overridden per-repo with a .github/codex-guard.yml file on the default branch — so agents can't just loosen the policy in their PR. Unknown keys are ignored (typo tolerant).

# .github/codex-guard.yml
preset: balanced
gate-agents-only: true
agent-labels:
  - codex-generated
  - agentic
todo-patterns:
  - TODO
  - FIXME
  - XXX
secret-exclude-paths:
  - README.md
  - docs/
comment-mode: replace
request-changes: true

A copy-paste template lives at examples/codex-guard.yml. Policy resolution is deterministic: the workflow preset supplies a baseline, the repository preset replaces that baseline, and individual repository keys win last. This keeps existing workflows compatible because an empty workflow preset retains the legacy defaults.

Diagnose an installation

Run the read-only local doctor after installing or changing policy:

npx --yes codex-guard doctor
npx --yes codex-guard doctor --json  # machine-readable output

It checks the pull-request trigger, Action step, effective workflow/job permissions, setup preset, policy YAML, unknown keys, boolean values, comment-mode, and fail-on. It exits 1 for configuration errors and 0 when only warnings or passes remain. This is a local-file diagnostic; GitHub branch protection and organization policy still live in repository settings.

Local dry-run (CLI)

The CLI installs the workflow and previews the same checks locally before CI — no token or waiting:

# install the GitHub workflow (safe observe mode by default)
npx --yes codex-guard init

# scan a diff from npm — no install needed (v1.7.0+)
npx --yes codex-guard --diff <(git diff origin/main)

# from this repo's source
git diff origin/main > /tmp/patch.diff
node src/cli.js --diff /tmp/patch.diff

# or straight against a ref (bare `--git` scans tracked + untracked changes)
npx --yes codex-guard --git --commits
node src/cli.js --git origin/main --commits

PowerShell does not support Bash process substitution (<(...)). Save the diff to a temporary UTF-8 file instead:

$patch = New-TemporaryFile
try {
  git diff origin/main | Set-Content -LiteralPath $patch -Encoding utf8
  npx --yes codex-guard --diff $patch
} finally {
  Remove-Item -LiteralPath $patch
}

Exit codes: 0 = no blocking findings, 1 = blocking findings, 2 = usage error. --json prints the raw report (same shape as the findings-json output) for scripts. In --git mode the CLI automatically loads .github/codex-guard.yml, so local content checks use the same preset, patterns, exclusions, and blocking rules as the Action. Use --preset or individual flags for an explicit local override, --config <path> for another policy file, or --no-config to bypass repository policy. Explicit CLI flags win over the loaded file. Commit hygiene is checked only when --commits is passed. Git-ignored files stay ignored; ordinary untracked files are treated as all-added patches, so a new file is scanned before its first git add. Binary or untracked files larger than 8 MiB are listed explicitly as unscanned instead of being silently treated as clean.

Agent skill (pre-submit self-check)

Same checks, one level further up: packed as a skill, so Codex or Claude Code run them themselves before opening a PR — the CI gate then never sees a dirty diff that the agent didn't already spot locally. This repo ships the skill in skills/codex-guard/SKILL.md; install it with:

bash skills/install.sh              # installs for Codex and Claude Code
# or copy skills/codex-guard/ into ~/.codex/skills/ or ~/.claude/skills/

The skill tells the agent to run node src/cli.js --git --commits before submitting, fix TODO/secret/commit findings, and only open the PR once the checks pass (or the exception is documented in the description).

Codex plugin

The same skill is packaged as an official Codex plugin (skill-only form, schema follows openai/plugins): plugins/codex-guard/.codex-plugin/plugin.json plus a marketplace manifest at .agents/plugins/marketplace.json. Codex users can add this repository as a plugin marketplace from the Codex app or CLI — install steps are in OpenAI's plugin docs: https://developers.openai.com/codex/plugins/build.

plugins/codex-guard/.codex-plugin/plugin.json
plugins/codex-guard/skills/codex-guard/SKILL.md
.agents/plugins/marketplace.json

Once installed, Codex runs the pre-submit checks itself before opening or updating a PR — same behavior as the standalone skill, one packaging step closer to discoverable on GitHub (see the codex-plugin topic).

DeepSeek Harness plugin (dsh)

A DSH bundle lives in dsh/: it declares a dsh.bundle manifest and registers a codex_guard tool that DeepSeek Harness agents can call to pre-flight an agent-authored diff before it becomes a PR.

dsh/
├── package.json        # dsh.bundle manifest (name: dsh-codex-guard)
├── cordis.patch.yml    # the layer a profile applies
└── index.js            # registers the codex_guard tool (dsh-tools API)

The tool shells out to the published CLI (npx --yes codex-guard --git) in the current working directory, so it gets the same deterministic report the CI gate uses. Node API compatibility is tested against the real @deepseek-ai/dsh-tools registry packages (see test/dsh.test.js), including an end-to-end run in a throwaway git repo.

Outputs

Output	Description
`policy-preset`	Selected policy baseline: `observe`, `balanced`, `strict`, or `custom`. Individual policy keys may still override it.
`result`	`pass`, `fail`, or `skipped`.
`detected-agent`	`true` / `false` — whether the PR looked agent-generated.
`failed-checks`	Comma-separated list of failed checks (`todos,secrets,commits,ci`).
`todo-count` / `secret-count` / `commit-count`	Findings per category.
`ci-failure-count`	Number of failing CI checks.
`content-scan-coverage`	Text patches scanned / eligible files, such as `12/13`, or `disabled`.
`unscanned-file-count`	Eligible files GitHub did not provide a textual patch for.
`findings-json`	JSON of the full report — pipe it into later steps to gate more or build dashboards.
`sweep-scanned` / `sweep-failed`	Sweep mode: agent PRs inspected / with blocking findings.
`sweep-report` / `sweep-json`	Sweep mode: markdown report (also in the run summary) / per-PR JSON.

Sweeping existing PRs

Adopting Codex Guard doesn't have to be retrospective — run a sweep to inspect every currently-open agent-generated PR in one go. Add a schedule trigger (the example ships with a weekly Monday run) for a zero-touch weekly agent-PR health check:

on:
  workflow_dispatch:
# … uses: Akimiya-z/codex-guard@v1 with: { sweep: 'true' }

The report is written to the run summary and sweep-report output (per-PR numbers in sweep-json). No per-PR comments or check-runs are posted. Use sweep-label to limit the run to PRs carrying a particular label. Copy-paste at examples/sweep.yml.

Examples

Gate everything, and skip secrets scanning on docs:

steps:
  - uses: Akimiya-z/codex-guard@v1
    with:
      gate-agents-only: 'false'
      secret-exclude-paths: 'README.md,docs/'

Observe first, enforce later:

steps:
  - uses: Akimiya-z/codex-guard@v1
    with:
      preset: 'observe'

Integrate with a tool that adds the agent label automatically:

If your agent has a GitHub App or a bot that labels PRs, current Codex Guard will respect whatever label you configure — and fails open (passes) when a PR has no signal at all.

Keep gating agent PRs from forks:

Use pull_request_target so the check runs with your repo's write token. The action reads the fork PR's files, commits and head SHA from the event payload — no extra config. Copy-paste at examples/forks.yml.

How it compares

Tool	What it does	Why you'd also want Codex Guard
Branch protection	Blocks merges without required reviews/checks	It's the policy; Codex Guard is the check that enforces agent-hygiene rules on a PR.
Secret scanners (gitleaks, TruffleHog)	Deep secret detection across history	Use in addition — ours is a cheap diff-scoped regex pass, not a replacement.
Linters / formatters	Style and static-analysis gates	We catch workflow issues agents leave behind (TODO, secrets, commit hygiene, red CI) that linters don't.
AI review bots (CodeRabbit, etc.)	LLM-powered PR review	Great — and slow/opinionated with per-review token cost. Codex Guard is deterministic, fast, free to run in CI, and gate-able without debate.
Agent self-review hooks	Agent checks its own output	Defaults fail; a neutral deterministic gate doesn't nod along.

Community

Ask & discuss — questions, setups, and roadmap voting live in GitHub Discussions; bug reports and feature requests go through the issue templates.
Good first issues are tagged good first issue and help wanted — the contribution guide is in CONTRIBUTING.md.
Roadmap is feedback-driven: the fastest way to influence the next release is to open a feature request and vote on it in Discussions.
Every external contribution gets called out in the release notes. Thank you — this project lives on its users' feedback.

Development

npm install
npm test          # node:test — no framework required
npm run check     # syntax-check every source file
npm run build     # rebuild the checked-in Action bundle

Consult CONTRIBUTING.md before opening a PR — it covers the release process (rebuild dist/, tag v1.x). See CHANGELOG.md for release history. Copy-paste workflows live in examples/, and docs/ explains how to record the demo GIF and smoke-test locally.

Limitations

Secret detection is regex-based on purpose — it catches the obvious mistakes cheaply, but it is not a replacement for a real secret scanner (use gitleaks or zizmor in addition).
The TODO scan only sees lines added by this PR — it won't nag you about pre-existing comments.
GitHub may omit textual patches for binary or very large files. Those files cannot be content-scanned. Codex Guard reports their paths and uses a neutral check conclusion instead of silently claiming full coverage, but a repository-wide secret scanner should remain the authoritative control.
GitHub's pull-request files endpoint returns at most 3,000 files. Reaching that limit is reported as incomplete coverage because additional files may be absent.
Commit statuses and check runs also have a conservative 3,000-result safety cap per API. Reaching it is reported as incomplete CI visibility rather than silently ignoring later results.
The local CLI scans ordinary untracked files, but reports binary files and untracked files larger than 8 MiB as unscanned. Git-ignored files are omitted by design.
Agent detection is intentionally heuristic. Set gate-agents-only: false when coverage matters more than distinguishing human and agent PRs.
Runs on pull_request events; for fork contributions use pull_request_target (see examples/forks.yml) and supply a token with the right scope.

Roadmap

Dropped by design: AI whole-PR summary gates — per-token LLM costs contradict the project's free, deterministic positioning. Codex Guard stays zero-cost.

License

MIT