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Codex Issues / #21158

Issue forms reference missing labels, so CLI/docs reports lose intended auto-labeling

Resolved 💬 2 comments Opened May 5, 2026 by zichen0116 Closed May 8, 2026

What issue are you seeing?

Two repository issue forms currently reference labels that do not exist in openai/codex, so new issues filed through those forms can miss the intended auto-labeling:

  • .github/ISSUE_TEMPLATE/3-cli.yml declares labels: [bug, needs triage], but the repo does not have a needs triage label.
  • .github/ISSUE_TEMPLATE/6-docs-issue.yml declares labels: [docs], but the repo does not have a docs label; the existing repo label is documentation.

This is a repo-owned workflow bug rather than a product behavior bug, but it directly affects issue triage quality and labeling consistency.

What steps can reproduce the bug?

  1. Inspect the issue form definitions in the repo:
  • .github/ISSUE_TEMPLATE/3-cli.yml
  • .github/ISSUE_TEMPLATE/6-docs-issue.yml
  1. Compare their declared labels with the current repo labels:
existing labels include:
- documentation
- needs-response

missing labels referenced by templates:
- needs triage
- docs

Repo-side evidence:

  • 3-cli.yml currently contains:
labels:
  - bug
  - needs triage
  • 6-docs-issue.yml currently contains:
labels: [docs]
  • gh label list -R openai/codex shows documentation and needs-response, but not docs or needs triage.

Additional impact surface:

  • the TUI feedback flow for external users builds GitHub issue links against template=3-cli.yml in codex-rs/tui/src/bottom_pane/feedback_view.rs, so that in-app path also routes through the affected CLI template metadata.

What is the expected behavior?

Issue forms should reference labels that actually exist in the repository, so issues opened from those forms receive the intended automatic labels.

Additional information

This looks like a narrow fix entirely within repo metadata:

  • align the issue template labels with the current repo labels, or
  • restore/create the missing labels if the template names are still the intended taxonomy.

I searched existing issues before filing and did not find one specifically tracking this issue-template label drift.

View original on GitHub ↗

2 Comments

mitre88 · 3 months ago

I validated this against the current issue templates and repo labels.

Current mismatch:

  • .github/ISSUE_TEMPLATE/3-cli.yml references needs triage, which is not an existing repo label.
  • .github/ISSUE_TEMPLATE/6-docs-issue.yml references docs, while the repo has documentation.

Existing relevant labels I confirmed: bug, CLI, documentation. Missing relevant labels: docs, needs triage.

A minimal two-file fix would be:

  • remove needs triage from the CLI issue form, leaving bug;
  • change the docs form label from docs to documentation.

I have this prepared locally and can send the PR if maintainers want it.

zichen0116 · 3 months ago

Thanks for taking a look at this as well. I dug a bit further on my side and prepared a very small patch on my fork in
case the maintainers prefer the template-alignment route here.

Branch: https://github.com/zichen0116/codex/tree/fix/issue-template-labels-21158
Compare: openai/codex
main...zichen0116:fix/issue-template-labels-21158

From what I could verify, the mismatch is:

  • .github/ISSUE_TEMPLATE/3-cli.yml uses needs triage, but that label does not exist in the repo
  • .github/ISSUE_TEMPLATE/6-docs-issue.yml uses docs, while the existing repo label is documentation

One small additional detail I noticed: codex-rs/tui/src/bottom_pane/feedback_view.rs routes the external follow-up
flow through template=3-cli.yml, so this seems to affect not only manual issue creation in the browser, but also the
repo-owned CLI/TUI bug-report path.

The patch I prepared keeps the scope intentionally narrow:

  • remove needs triage from .github/ISSUE_TEMPLATE/3-cli.yml and keep bug
  • change docs to documentation in .github/ISSUE_TEMPLATE/6-docs-issue.yml

If maintainers would rather restore the old labels instead, that would work too. But aligning the templates to the
labels that already exist today seemed like the safest small fix.

Happy to turn that branch into the invited PR if this direction looks reasonable.