Codex Desktop App / codex app-server does not honor project-scoped OTel config in trusted projects

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

Codex 26.325.31654 (0.118.0-alpha.2)

What subscription do you have?

ChatGPT Enterprise

What platform is your computer?

Darwin 24.2.0 arm64 arm

What issue are you seeing?

We observed a difference between Codex CLI and Codex Desktop App regarding OpenTelemetry configuration.

• Codex CLI can read [otel] settings from a trusted project's .codex/config.toml and successfully send OTel logs.
• Codex Desktop App (appears to run via codex app-server) does not seem to honor the same project-scoped .codex/config.toml OTel settings.
• If the same [otel] configuration is added to the user's global ~/.codex/config.toml, Codex Desktop App can send telemetry.

This makes team-wide telemetry difficult in fork-based rollout because global config is a per-user workaround, not a scalable repository-distributed configuration model.

What steps can reproduce the bug?

1. Create a trusted project with .codex/config.toml containing a valid [otel] configuration.
2. Confirm that codex exec or Codex CLI reads the project-scoped config and exports OTel logs.
3. Open the same trusted project in Codex Desktop App.
4. Use Codex Desktop App normally and check whether OTel logs are exported.
5. Add the same [otel] settings to the user's global ~/.codex/config.toml.
6. Restart Codex Desktop App and repeat the same test.

Observed result:

• CLI: project-scoped OTel works
• Desktop App / app-server: project-scoped OTel appears not to work
• Desktop App / app-server: global OTel works

Uploaded thread: 019d6bed-eb78-7cc0-bc0f-6c655af763b7

What is the expected behavior?

Codex Desktop App / codex app-server should either:

1. honor [otel] settings from a trusted project's .codex/config.toml, consistent with Codex CLI, or
2. explicitly document that OTel is supported only from global ~/.codex/config.toml.

For team usage, project-scoped telemetry should be officially supported because depending on per-user global config does not scale in fork-based rollout.

Additional information

Please clarify whether this is expected behavior or a bug.

The main product request is:

• document the current intended scope for OTel config (global only vs project-local), and
• support project-scoped telemetry in Codex Desktop App / codex app-server for organizational rollout.

Feedback thread ID: 019d6bed-eb78-7cc0-bc0f-6c655af763b7
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CodexDesktop App: 26.325.31654
Internal Codex binary version: 0.118.0-alpha.2