Agent can't edit files when running in sandbox

Open 💬 4 comments Opened Mar 8, 2026 by PierrunoYT

💡 Likely answer: A maintainer (github-actions[bot], contributor) responded on this thread — see the highlighted reply below.

What version of the Codex App are you using (From “About Codex” dialog)?

Latest

What subscription do you have?

Pro

What platform is your computer?

Microsoft Windows NT 10.0.26200.0 x64

What issue are you seeing?

When im running Codex on Windows in Sandbox mode it struggles to edit files or ran commands

What steps can reproduce the bug?

What is the expected behavior?

It should work on Windows smoothly

Additional information

View original on GitHub ↗

4 Comments

github-actions[bot] contributor · 5 months ago

Potential duplicates detected. Please review them and close your issue if it is a duplicate.

#13917
#13905
#13887

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tornupgaming · 5 months ago

This is closer to https://github.com/openai/codex/issues/13542.

I've had the same issue(s) as described in this issue and the linked issue. Both rg and cargo were unable to be used by Codex even though my powershell env and other agent can run them fine. I'm using the new Codex app on Windows 11.

After a bunch of back and forth modifying the config, asking Codex "can you run ripgrep?", and using it to diagnose it's own shell issues (like IT Support), we found that PATHEXT was nearly all missing from the shell execution environment.

The "fix" I've found to work is to add the following to the config.toml which mimics the current value in my own system environment variables. This is so Codex can _locate_ tools in my path.

[shell_environment_policy.set]
PATHEXT = ".COM;.EXE;.BAT;.CMD;.VBS;.VBE;.JS;.JSE;.WSF;.WSH;.MSC"

The caveat is that I need to set permissions to 'Full Access' within the app because while Codex can now _locate_ the tools, it can't _execute_ the tools with Default Permissions enabled, so that's the next thing I need to figure out. I need to re-read the docs.

Can you tell that I really want Codex to work for me because I like the models?

TLDR; Add the PATHEXT value to config, and set permissions to Full Access. Works for now, probably isn't to some people's taste to run Full Access.

PierrunoYT · 5 months ago

This is closer to https://github.com/openai/codex/issues/13542. I've had the same issue(s) as described in this issue and the linked issue. Both rg and cargo were unable to be used by Codex even though my powershell env and other agent can run them fine. I'm using the new Codex app on Windows 11. After a bunch of back and forth modifying the config, asking Codex "can you run ripgrep?", and using it to diagnose it's own shell issues (like IT Support), we found that PATHEXT was nearly all missing from the shell execution environment. The "fix" I've found to work is to add the following to the config.toml which mimics the current value in my own system environment variables. This is so Codex can _locate_ tools in my path. ``toml [shell_environment_policy.set] PATHEXT = ".COM;.EXE;.BAT;.CMD;.VBS;.VBE;.JS;.JSE;.WSF;.WSH;.MSC" `` The caveat is that I need to set permissions to 'Full Access' within the app because while Codex can now _locate_ the tools, it can't _execute_ the tools with Default Permissions enabled, so that's the next thing I need to figure out. I need to re-read the docs. Can you tell that I really want Codex to work for me because I like the models? TLDR; Add the PATHEXT value to config, and set permissions to Full Access. Works for now, probably isn't to some people's taste to run Full Access.

Yeah the full access is the issue because someone used Yolo Mode and it wiped the whole Data.

JamesHutchison · 29 days ago

Any update on this? I'm writing something in windows and I have to babysit the hell out of it as it accumulates files because it can write new files but not edit them. VS Code extension.

Ai agent says this:

The edit helper is hitting a Windows sandbox refresh error on this workspace