Codex CLI doesn’t load skills from .agents/skills when it is a symlink

Description

Codex CLI does not discover skills when .agents/skills is a symlink. Skills load correctly when .agents/skills is a real directory. This breaks workflows where .agents/skills points to another location.

Expected behavior

Codex should traverse .agents/skills even when it is a symlink, and load skills found under the target directory.

Actual behavior

When .agents/skills is a symlink, no skills are discovered. Replacing the symlink with a real directory makes the skills appear.

Steps to reproduce

1) Create a skills directory at skills-store/ containing skill folders with SKILL.md files.
2) Make .agents/skills a symlink to that directory:

• ln -s skills-store .agents/skills

3) Start Codex in the repo and check the available skills list.
4) Observe that none of the skills under the symlink are loaded.
5) Replace the symlink with a real directory:

• mv .agents/skills .agents/skills.symlink.bak
• mkdir -p .agents/skills
• cp -R skills-store/* .agents/skills/

6) Restart Codex and check skills again.
7) Skills are now discovered.

Environment

• Codex CLI version: v0.98.0
• OS: macOS (Darwin 25.2.0, arm64)

Workaround

Use a real .agents/skills directory (copy files instead of symlinking).