Codex repeatedly asks for command execution approval despite auto-approve settings (prompt shown dozens of times per response)
What version of Codex is running?
0.4.68
What subscription do you have?
Plus
Which model were you using?
gpt-5.2-Codex
What platform is your computer?
Microsoft Windows NT 10.0.19045.0 x64
What terminal emulator and version are you using (if applicable)?
VScode
What issue are you seeing?
⛔ WARNING: Repeatedly dismissing this issue as a duplicate, despite it persisting for months, is unacceptable for paying customers ⛔
Codex repeatedly prompts for command execution approval dozens of times during a single response.
In one instance, I had to approve the same permission prompt 25 times for the same answer, even after selecting "Yes, and don't ask again this session".
The "don't ask again" option is completely ineffective and is not respected even within the same response.
This behavior makes Codex unusable for any task that involves inspecting files or repositories.
What steps can reproduce the bug?
- [Optional] Configure Codex with auto-approval enabled in the global VS Code settings.json:
- codex.runCommands.prompt = "never"
- codex.runCommands.autoApprove = true
- Restart VS Code.
- Ask Codex to perform any task that involves:
- reading files (Get-Content),
- inspecting a repository,
- or running simple contextual commands (Set-Location, git status).
- Codex repeatedly displays the command execution permission dialog.
- Selecting "_Yes, and don't ask again this session_" has no effect; the dialog keeps appearing multiple times during the same response.
What is the expected behavior?
When auto-approve is enabled, Codex should not prompt for command execution approval.
At a minimum, selecting "don't ask again this session" should suppress further prompts for the duration of the response or session.
Additional information
⛔ WARNING: Repeatedly dismissing this issue as a duplicate, despite it persisting for months, is unacceptable for paying customers ⛔
This problem was already reported months ago (for example, issue #2860), yet it still persists as of January 29, 2025, many months after it was first reported.
Closing or dismissing the issue without a fix does not resolve the problem, and the behavior remains unchanged.
This is extremely frustrating for paying customers.
We are actively paying for this service and currently feel abandoned due to the lack of responses, lack of follow-up, and lack of a real solution to a critical usability issue.
At its current state, the auto-approve feature is effectively non-functional, severely impacting productivity and trust in the tool.
<img width="638" height="385" alt="Image" src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/c77e4c9f-131b-44d1-8f33-62bc8adca756" /><br />
This previous message popped up up to 20 times in the very same response.
<img width="624" height="354" alt="Image" src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/9bd82cb5-1ff4-4ff8-8283-a4779dd38054" /><br />
This prompt also keeps showing up endlessly in the same session and same answer too.
7 Comments
Potential duplicates detected. Please review them and close your issue if it is a duplicate.
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Serious question: has anyone considered using OpenAI’s own Codex to actually identify and fix this issue?
This bug has been reported for months, is trivial to reproduce, and yet remains unresolved.
It’s hard not to wonder why a company building a premium AI coding assistant isn’t leveraging that same AI to diagnose and fix a clearly persistent problem in its own tooling.
@etraut-openai Confirmed duplicate of #10099 (same VS Code “Approve this session” prompt repeats endlessly). Also overlaps #7811. Suggest closing #10187 as a dup of #10099 and consolidating any extra repro details there.
@andreszs, have you already tried enabling the Windows experimental sandbox? Without a sandboxing mechanism, all tool calls need to be manually approved on Windows.
The Full access mode seems to have solved this issue correctly, thanks.
Full Access mode didnt help me, I've built this Windows app (which is the only paltform seems to have this issue on, as on Mac and Linux Codex stopped ask me for approvals) Here is the app btw: https://github.com/antondeulia/HighGround (Yeah its a small folder manager which is useful for myself, but you can just use Auto Submit plugin from there (Note: you need to launch VS Code with -debugging-port=9222 in order this plugin to work, you can start your VS code from the app so it will automaticly attach this port for you)
@andreszs full access mode is not a fix. Thats either a "all or nothing". Why can't we just whitelist common commands instead? that would be much safer.