The docs seem to indicate you can use your OpenAI API key with the VS Code Extension, but there isn’t a lot of detail on how to actually configure that. Can we get some clarity around what exactly needs to be updated in the extension config to enable this? I’ve hit my codex local limit and would lik…

I haven’t personally done this, but perhaps it can help you a bit: These are the instructions for Codex CLI, but I think they are supposed to be related: codex/docs/authentication.md at main · openai/codex · GitHub [image] In the IDE settings, it refers to the same configuration file, so it i…

So as of a few minutes ago I think I figured it out. I had to install the codex CLI and then open the auth.json file in my IDE. I wiped out the existing token & refresh data from there and just saved the API key in that file, as well as set the config.toml file to have API key as my preferred auth m…

Didn’t work for me on cursor, config.toml wasn’t there, i tried to create it manually, i’ve also tried to add the config directly into user settings and saved the apikey in auth.json but when i open codex i see “Sign in with ChatGPT” popup

same here bro, but i just figured it out! After installing the extension, it still required login with chatgpt when I only set up the config # ~/.codex/config.toml preferred_auth_method = "apikey" I guess we have to set env variable at the same time just like Codex Cli. So I launched VS Code from…

I can also confirm that setting the API key in auth.json worked for me. I had a bit of an issue since I couldn’t find the schema for auth.json anywhere so I logged in to force it to generate the file. Just for anyone else who finds this discussion later, the file just needs to look like this: ~/.co…

There seems to be a bug with the “Use API Key” option when using VS Code with WSL [image]

Here are the steps I took to get Codex extension working in VSCode: Quit VSCode. Edit the file ~/.codex/config.toml to include the following: preferred_auth_method = "apikey" Open the file ~.codex/auth.json and delete all the contents. Save. In terminal export your OpenAI key: % export O…

VSCode Extension with API Key

Codex

louenas September 15, 2025, 9:17pm 8

Now it’s possible to set the Api Key right from the Codex extension UI. Sign out to see this:

Topic		Replies	Views
Introducing the Codex IDE extension Codex codex , api , coding-with-chatgpt	30	15293	October 21, 2025
Can't setup Codex CLI with custom base url and api key, via terminal env variables or command options? Codex	2	10208	October 24, 2025
Visual Studio Code extension for Codex API codex	23	19082	December 13, 2023
Fix for vscode/cursor plugin: stream error: exceeded retry limit, last status: 401 Unauthorized Codex codex	9	9147	October 29, 2025
Login with OPENAI_API_KEY environment variable Codex codex , login , codex-cli	3	2127	January 21, 2026

VSCode Extension with API Key

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