CLI shell/tool execution fails across sessions with exit code -1 and empty output

Open 💬 3 comments Opened Apr 2, 2026 by GarrettS

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

What version of Codex CLI is running?

codex-cli 0.118.0 / codex-cli 0.117.0

What subscription do you have?

$20 plan

Which model were you using?

gpt-5.2-codex

What platform is your computer?

Darwin 22.6.0 x86_64 i386

What terminal emulator and version are you using (if applicable)?

Mac Terminal

What issue are you seeing?

### What version of Codex is running?
Codex is unable to determine from affected sessions because basic shell execution is failing there. I can provide the exact version separately if needed. But codex-cli 0.118.0 and codex-cli 0.117.0 both exhibit the problem.

### Which model were you using?
GPT-5 family coding model in Codex CLI - codex-cli 0.118.0 / codex-cli 0.117.0

### What platform is your computer?
macOS 13.x, bash shell

### What issue are you seeing?
Basic local shell execution is broken across all of my coding sessions, not just one. Trivial commands like pwd, ls, git status, and sed fail with exit code -1 and no meaningful stdout/stderr.

Was working fine yesterday. Today it is broken.

What steps can reproduce the bug?

### Steps to reproduce
Start a coding session and ask the agent to run simple local commands such as:

pwd
ls
git status
sed -n '1,20p' <file>

What is the expected behavior?

These commands should run normally, or at minimum fail with an actionable error.

Additional information

### Actual behavior
They fail with exit code -1 and no useful output. The failures persist across retries, across unrelated commands, and across separate sessions, both with latest codex update and prior minor update.

This makes the coding environment mostly useless for repo work. The agent cannot inspect the workspace, verify git state, read repo files, or perform normal coding tasks.

View original on GitHub ↗

3 Comments

github-actions[bot] contributor · 4 months ago

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

#15032
#14796

Powered by Codex Action

etraut-openai contributor · 4 months ago

If you're able to repro, please use /feedback to upload your log and session details, then post the thread ID here.

GarrettS · 4 months ago

If you're able to repro

Unfortunately, I'm only able to repro; can't make it go away.

As stated, both codex-cli 0.118.0 and codex-cli 0.117.0 exhibit the problem.

And I just got this:

› Piecemeal docs change proposal incoming.The application panicked (crashed).
Message:  /tmp is absolute: Os { code: 1, kind: PermissionDenied, message: "Operation not permitted" }
Location: protocol/src/protocol.rs:1036nts/code-guidelines

Backtrace omitted. Run with RUST_BACKTRACE=1 environment variable to display it.
Run with RUST_BACKTRACE=full to include source snippets.
Warning: SpanTrace capture is Unsupported.
Ensure that you've setup a tracing-error ErrorLayer and the semver versions are compatible
^C
^C^C

— and as can be seen, ctrl+c did not work. That shows codex processes failed in failed state. IOW, not fail safe.