Rejecting tool with "No, and tell codex what to do differently" completely ignores the given instructions
Open 💬 2 comments Opened Feb 24, 2026 by ldorigo
💡 Likely answer: A maintainer (etraut-openai, contributor)
responded on this thread — see the highlighted reply below.
What version of the Codex App are you using (From “About Codex” dialog)?
Version 26.217.1959 (669)
What subscription do you have?
Pro (200$)
What platform is your computer?
Darwin 24.6.0 arm64 arm
What issue are you seeing?
Adding a rejection instruction in the approval flow is just not working - codex doesnt see it and invents a reason why the command failed / tries the same action again instantly.
What steps can reproduce the bug?
Get an approval request. Write something to do instead in the third option and press 'submit'.
<img width="656" height="206" alt="Image" src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/851b80b0-2395-44df-af6e-1a59255e44e1" />
It looks like it receives the "message" only later on, and ends up in a weird inconsistent state with two ongoing "threads" at once???
What is the expected behavior?
_No response_
Additional information
_No response_
2 Comments
The latest models support parallel tool calls. What's likely happening based on your description is that there are multiple tool calls requested. One of the them requires approval and one or more others do not. The approval dialog is presented to you, and you're choosing a different option. As soon as you submit it, the results of the other tool calls (which were running while the approval dialog was presented) and the model's response appear in the thread. You should eventually see the "alternative action" performed.
Does that explain the behavior you're seeing? If so, then it's working as intended.
@etraut-openai no, that's not what is happenning.
I made a video to showcase it. Notice how a single tool is called (the first tool call was done before it called the second one), and upon rejection, the model is unaware of my rejection comment.
https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/a8e43b8b-b44d-4f8e-8c38-9afebe621cee