codex can not auto run go test with chromedp

Resolved 💬 3 comments Opened Jan 28, 2026 by bronze1man Closed Feb 6, 2026
💡 Likely answer: A maintainer (etraut-openai, contributor) responded on this thread — see the highlighted reply below.

What version of Codex is running?

codex-cli 0.92.0

What subscription do you have?

ChatGPT Business

Which model were you using?

gpt-5.2-codex

What platform is your computer?

Darwin 24.1.0 arm64 arm

What terminal emulator and version are you using (if applicable)?

iTerm2

What issue are you seeing?

In a Codex CLI session running a Go test that uses chromedp, Chrome fails to start. A minimal chromedp smoke test in tests/chromedp_test fails with chromedp run
failed: chrome failed to start. In the same repo, go test -v -count=1 ./tests/reflect_test fails with a panic from chromedp startup.

What steps can reproduce the bug?

  1. Start Codex CLI in repo xxx.
  2. Ask Codex to run: go test -v -count=1 ./tests/chromedp_test.
  3. Observe failure: chromedp run failed: chrome failed to start.

content of tests/chromedp_test/chromedp_smoke_test.go

package chromedp_test

import (
	"context"
	"testing"
	"time"

	"github.com/chromedp/chromedp"
)

func TestChromeDpSmoke(t *testing.T) {
	ctx, cancel := context.WithTimeout(context.Background(), 20*time.Second)
	defer cancel()

	allocCtx, allocCancel := chromedp.NewExecAllocator(ctx, chromedp.DefaultExecAllocatorOptions[:]...)
	defer allocCancel()

	bctx, bcancel := chromedp.NewContext(allocCtx)
	defer bcancel()

	var title string
	err := chromedp.Run(
		bctx,
		chromedp.Navigate("data:text/html,<html><head><title>ok</title></head><body>ok</body></html>"),
		chromedp.Title(&title),
	)
	if err != nil {
		t.Fatalf("chromedp run failed: %v", err)
	}
	if title != "ok" {
		t.Fatalf("unexpected title: %q", title)
	}
}

chromedp version. (part of go.mod)

	github.com/chromedp/cdproto v0.0.0-20240202021202-6d0b6a386732 // indirect
	github.com/chromedp/chromedp v0.9.5 // indirect
	github.com/chromedp/sysutil v1.0.0 // indirect

What is the expected behavior?

Chromedp should launch Chrome and the smoke test should pass (title is ‘ok’). The test completes successfully when run outside of Codex on my machine.

Additional information

_No response_

View original on GitHub ↗

3 Comments

etraut-openai contributor · 7 months ago

It looks like you're hitting a sandbox policy violation. Codex’s macOS Seatbelt sandbox restricts writes to the workspace and temp dirs, while chromedp writes to ~/Library/* by default, which can cause “chrome failed to start.”

As a workaround, try --sandbox danger-full-access or set chromedp.UserDataDir(...) to a path under /tmp or the repo.

bronze1man · 6 months ago

but claude cli works by default without any config.(ask me to confirm to run cmd of go test)
so I use claude when I need chromedp auto test.
i want to use codex too. (claude token limits is too low)

bronze1man · 6 months ago

gpt-5.3-code + codex-cli 0.98.0 looks like fix this problem.
Just ask ai to run test outside sandbox in project prompt.