# ralphex: The Extended Ralph Loop for Claude Code and codex

> Open-source MIT orchestrator that drives coding agents through a structured plan, running each task in a fresh session plus multi-agent code review.

Published: 2026-06-15
URL: https://daniliants.com/insights/ralphex-the-extended-ralph-loop-for-claude-code-and-codex/
Tags: claude-code, coding-agents, codex, multi-agent

---

## Summary

ralphex is an open-source (MIT) orchestrator that drives coding agents (Claude Code, codex, Copilot CLI, Cursor CLI) through a structured plan rather than writing code itself. It executes plan tasks one at a time in fresh agent sessions, commits after each, then runs a multi-phase, multi-agent code review. It is an "extended" version of Geoffrey Huntley's ralph loop, adding plans, per-task session resets, and cross-model validation.

## Key Insight

- **Fresh session per task** is the core trick - each plan task runs in a brand-new agent session to avoid context degradation over long features. This directly counters the quality decay that hits single long-running agent sessions.
- **5 parallel review agents** with fixed specializations: quality (bugs/security), implementation correctness, testing, simplification (over-engineering), documentation. Spawned via Claude Code's Task tool or codex's native multi-agent spawn.
- **Cross-model validation**: an optional GPT-5 review phase (through codex) gives an independent second perspective. ralphex deliberately *skips* the external review when running `--codex` mode, because codex-reviewing-codex is same-model self-review with weak signal - a sharp observation about review quality.
- **Four phases**: execute (run tasks + validation commands like tests/linters, tick checkboxes, commit) -> 5-agent review -> optional GPT-5 external review (Claude evaluates findings, fixes, iterates until codex reports clean) -> final 2-agent pass on critical/major issues only, then plan moves to `completed/`.
- **Review-only mode**: `ralphex --review` runs the full review pipeline on existing branch changes regardless of how they were made (plan mode, manual edits, another agent). `--external-only` runs just the codex cross-validation pass.
- **Config is layered and text-file based**: global at `~/.config/ralphex/` (INI config + `prompts/*.txt` + `agents/*.txt`), overridable per-repo via `.ralphex/`. You can reference Claude Code agents you already have installed by name (e.g. `qa-expert`, `go-test-expert`) without duplicating them.
- **Provider flexibility**: `--codex` runs the entire pipeline natively on codex CLI as a first-class executor (path for teams on an OpenAI plan vs a Claude subscription); `--pass-claude-md` makes codex pick up `CLAUDE.md` as `AGENTS.md`. The `codex-as-claude` wrapper translates non-Claude agent output into ralphex's stream-json protocol for any compatible streaming agent.
- Notifications on completion/failure via Telegram, Email, Slack, Webhook, or custom script. Optional containerized execution scopes the agent to the project only, not the whole system.