Severe process spawning regression in Codex 5.3 (rg.exe / conhost.exe storm, system input stalls)

What version of the IDE extension are you using?

0.4.71

What subscription do you have?

Pro

Which IDE are you using?

VS Code

What platform is your computer?

Microsoft Windows NT 10.0.26200.0

What issue are you seeing?

After upgrading from Codex 5.2 to 5.3, local execution in VS Code causes extreme process spawning on Windows 11. While a prompt is running, and continuing after the prompt has concluded, hundreds of instances of rg.exe and conhost.exe are created repeatedly. This results in severe system unresponsiveness, including mouse and keyboard input freezing. The machine becomes effectively unusable until Codex is disabled or VS Code is closed.

This behaviour was present but manageable in 5.2. In 5.3 it is dramatically worse and consistently reproducible.

Environment
Local project mode
Large codebase

What steps can reproduce the bug?

Running a Codex prompt in local mode triggers continuous spawning of rg.exe and conhost.exe. The spawning continues even after the prompt completes. CPU usage spikes and scheduler pressure causes system-wide UI/input stalls. Task Manager shows many short-lived console processes. Closing VS Code or switching Codex to Cloud mode immediately resolves the issue.

What is the expected behavior?

Codex should terminate background activity promptly after prompt completion and should not spawn unbounded numbers of console processes or degrade system input responsiveness during normal operation.

Additional information

This appears to be Windows-specific and related to repeated CLI invocation (ripgrep) rather than disk I/O. Cloud mode avoids the issue entirely, suggesting a local execution regression in 5.3.