GPT WORLD / INDEPENDENT CODEX FIELD MANUAL Source review · 2026-07-31

Retrospective edition / CODEX

Parallelize evidence, not conflicting writes

Subagents need independent ownership and result contracts; headless CI needs fixed permissions, machine-readable output, and isolated credentials.

01 / DECIDE

Architecture decision

Use it for parallel research, test analysis, review, and independent components with no write collision.

Subagents need independent ownership and result contracts; headless CI needs fixed permissions, machine-readable output, and isolated credentials. Map input, output, state, and side effects as one observable path before deciding which layer owns parallelize evidence, not conflicting writes.

02 / BUILD

Three-step implementation

  1. 01

    Frame the contract

    Write down the caller, data classification, success condition, timeout, cancellation, and ownership. Use it for parallel research, test analysis, review, and independent components with no write collision.

  2. 02

    Build one narrow path

    Implement one end-to-end path with request correlation, typed state, and reversible failure handling. Subagents need independent ownership and result contracts; headless CI needs fixed permissions, machine-readable output, and isolated credentials.

  3. 03

    Prove the outcome

    Turn acceptance into a repeatable fixture, contract test, or browser test. CI artifacts show task ownership, structured outcomes, tests, diffs, and that every worker stayed inside its boundary.

03 / BOUND

Production boundary

Never expose untrusted pull requests to privileged secrets or let multiple workers modify the same files without coordination.

04 / PROVE

Acceptance evidence

CI artifacts show task ownership, structured outcomes, tests, diffs, and that every worker stayed inside its boundary.

SOURCE / HTTP

Reproducible source probe

curl -fsSI 'https://learn.chatgpt.com/docs/agent-configuration/subagents' | sed -n '1,5p'