Local-agent runs can resolve home/workspace paths as /home/[]/... instead of a real user path

What version of Codex is running?

0.114.0

What subscription do you have?

Plus

Which model were you using?

gpt-5.4 / gpt-5.4-mini via local Codex adapter

What platform is your computer?

Linux x86_64

What issue are you seeing?

In some local-agent / Paperclip-style runs, Codex receives malformed home/workspace paths that contain a literal placeholder segment like /home/[]/... instead of a real username.

When this happens, multiple runtime paths are wrong at once, for example:

• fallback workspace paths under /home/[]/.paperclip/...
• instructions file paths under /home/[]/<workspace>/agents/.../AGENTS.md
• skill paths under /home/[]/.codex/skills/...
• working directory paths under /home/[]/<workspace>

One visible symptom is loader stderr like:

ERROR codex_core::skills::loader: failed to stat skills entry /home/[]/.codex/skills/create-agent-adapter (symlink): No such file or directory (os error 2)

I verified locally that this is not explained only by a bad HOME env var in the interactive shell. In affected historical runs, the malformed /home/[]/... paths appear inside the run context / adapter paths themselves.

What steps can reproduce the bug?

I do not yet have a minimal standalone repro outside the local-agent workflow, but the observed pattern is:

1. Run Codex through a local-agent / Paperclip-style wrapper that launches codex exec with persisted agent configuration.
2. In some runs, the wrapper emits context showing workspace or instruction paths rooted at /home/[]/....
3. Codex then tries to load skills and instructions from those malformed paths.

Sanitized examples from affected runs:

Using fallback workspace "/home/[]/.paperclip/instances/default/workspaces/<agent-id>"
Loaded agent instructions file: /home/[]/<workspace>/agents/<role>/AGENTS.md
Working dir: /home/[]/<workspace>
ERROR codex_core::skills::loader: failed to stat skills entry /home/[]/.codex/skills/create-agent-adapter (symlink): No such file or directory (os error 2)

What is the expected behavior?

Paths should resolve to a real home/workspace path, for example:

• /home/<user>/.codex/...
• /home/<user>/<workspace>/...

and never contain a literal placeholder segment like [].

Additional information

A few notes that may help narrow the problem:

• The malformed path shows up in local-agent wrapper logs before normal work begins.
• In the current live agent config, the stored cwd and instructionsFilePath values are correct, which suggests the bad path may be introduced during some adapter/workspace fallback flow rather than being permanently stored in the current agent record.
• There was also a separate stale local skill symlink on my machine that caused a real missing-skill error, but that is not the core bug here. The upstream issue is that the path root itself becomes /home/[]/... in some runs.

If useful, I can help test a narrower repro with any logging you want added around home-dir / workspace-path resolution.