> I'm guessing the next thing I should probably look into is some sort of machine vm I can tunnel my codex-gui requests to so I don't have to deal with the sandbox approvals (I don't want to give it "dangerous" access to my entire mac).

This is what https://github.com/kstenerud/yoloai does.

Sandboxing using Docker, Podman, containerd (linux only), seatbelt (macos only), tart (macos only), apple container (macos 26+ only).

It takes a copy of your workdir, does its thing inside of the sandbox, and you pull the results back using git semantics:

    $ yoloai new mybugfix . -a # launch default sandbox in . and also attach the terminal

    # Work with the agent...

    $ yoloai diff mybugfix  # See what it did
    $ yoloai apply mybugfix # Bring out commits and/or uncommitted changes.
    $ yoloai destroy mybugfix