GPT-5.3-Codex's false refusals

Resolved 💬 5 comments Opened Feb 10, 2026 by mjp0 Closed Feb 10, 2026

Can someone from OpenAI comments on GPT-5.3-Codex's false refusals. I have prompts which are normal dev workflows with explicit instructions to use gh to interact with repo, etc., which have had zero refusals from GPT-5.2 models. Now every single time I try to use these prompts with Codex using 5.3, the model starts with saying what it will do next and then promptly says "I can't help you with that" and exits. When I ask it why it refused, every single time it says it mistakenly refused the prompt and asks if I still want to continue. If I say yes, it does one tool call and dies again.

I don't want to paste the prompt here but I would like to get some clarification why codex behaves this way? I don't have any keys or auth in the prompt, it's basically just a list of expectations and gh examples. I tried to figure this out with ChatGPT and it couldn't figure it out either.

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