Clarify the OpenAI Docs route in Codex: System skill vs Skills, Plugins, and MCP

[omarpinarecords]

I am opening this as a discussion because there is a product/UX question in addition to the bug report in #20629.

Context, sanitized:

• The desired route is the first-party OpenAI Docs route in Codex, not a custom workspace helper.
• OpenAI Docs can currently look like several different surfaces to a user: a System skill, a Personal skill, a normal Skill, a Plugin, an MCP server, $openai-docs skill invocation, @ picker/mention search, or slash-command route.
• The related System-skill instability is already tracked in Codex App briefly shows bundled system skills, then hides them after initialization #20629 and Codex Desktop background exec intermittently deletes ~/.codex/skills/.system #19265. I added an OpenAI Docs-specific confirmation to Codex App briefly shows bundled system skills, then hides them after initialization #20629.
• Even when the current UI shows an OpenAI Developer Docs MCP entry and an OpenAI Docs skill entry, it is still hard to tell which route is the intended first-party route and whether a duplicate Personal/helper route is active.

Questions / requested clarification:

1. What is the intended canonical route for first-party OpenAI Docs in Codex Desktop?
2. Should users invoke it through $openai-docs, the picker, /mcp, Plugins, Skills, or another surface?
3. Should OpenAI Docs appear as System, Personal, Skill, Plugin, MCP, or more than one of those?
4. Is OpenAI Developer Docs MCP expected to be visible separately from the OpenAI Docs skill?
5. Should Codex warn or deduplicate when a Personal/custom helper has the same display name as the System OpenAI Docs route?
6. Is there or should there be a built-in health check showing: System skill present, MCP enabled/usable, duplicate Personal override absent, and fresh thread has the route?

Why this matters:

A user should not need to inspect local files or troubleshoot skill cache state to know whether the official OpenAI Docs route is working. This is especially important because OpenAI/Codex docs are the source of truth for model, SDK, MCP, Apps SDK, and Codex behavior.

No private logs, screenshots, workspace names, legal/case material, secrets, or local absolute paths are included here.

Related issue comment with the OpenAI Docs-specific bug signal:
#20629 (comment)