VSCode: Add a project to use codex
Open 💬 12 comments Opened Feb 7, 2026 by JeremyMahieu
What version of the IDE extension are you using?
0.4.71
What subscription do you have?
ChatGPT Plus
Which IDE are you using?
VS Code
What platform is your computer?
Microsoft Windows NT 10.0.26200.0 x64
What issue are you seeing?
VSCode is in remote mode SSHing to a Debian server.
When trying to run a pompt says "Unable to send message" "Add a project to use Codex"
<img width="567" height="177" alt="Image" src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/2b357d92-eaa8-430d-a6d7-36bacc87afef" />
What steps can reproduce the bug?
Open a remote SSH session, and use the folder /
What is the expected behavior?
That you can run pompts.
Additional information
<img width="215" height="108" alt="Image" src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/9c2c5bf0-3142-433b-8263-9f464fd39447" />
12 Comments
Found the reason, your SSH session can't be in folder
/. To solve open a different folder such as/srvI think this is a real bug.Same issue here...
VS Code Version: 1.109.2
Codex Version: 0.4.73 (installed on Ubuntu)
Thanks for this help, it worked fine after reloading VS code in the project folder
I am probably doing something wrong - and getting the same popup:
<img width="290" height="150" alt="Image" src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/eee66b03-f93c-49ed-a88f-24d1ac3d872a" />
I'm on Windows on this machine, and want to edit a local file. I open a file in vscode, click on the usual "trust this workspace" and attempt to write anything in chat results in the popup above?
Can you guys advise what am I doing wrong, or what should I do to allow it wo work with the file same way as Cline / Copilot does?
Same issue. Installed on Windows, opened a local file, type text into chat and "Unable to send message - Add a project to use Codex"
try to click [file] on your Vscode then [open Folder], that's how I fixed it
Thanks god i found that
So gay. you would've thought they would've fixed this by now
OMG u genius!
THis doesn't work either for when its on the debian directly either. this should definitely get fixed to not require or prevent it from being used in a specific folder.
for openai/microsoft, it's the missing details like this, which is a very small detail but a pain nonetheless, that's pushing anthropic's claude to new heights in popularity in dev. "It just works.."
honestly it should just 'work' - not like any of us have an extra 20 minutes to spare in our 14+ hour workday to dig this up online and find this out.. so if we're in the wrong directory - it's backed by an llm - so from a ui perspective, it needs to go figure it out and figure out our intent and switch accordingly. which is why claude code is so much more popular, i was experimenting with it this morning & (finally) found this thread - but it's frustrating when the rest of the world is doing their work and some tool is stuck on what path I'm in and whether or not I should be in that path..