Skill.md text not rendering in Windows app in Windows mode

Resolved 💬 5 comments Opened May 6, 2026 by kendonB Closed Aug 4, 2026

💡 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)?

26.429.61741

What subscription do you have?

Pro

What platform is your computer?

Windows 11 x64 (Microsoft Windows NT 10.0.26200.0 x64)

What issue are you seeing?

On WSL mode, I could click the skill name and the skill text would pop up to the right. On Windows mode, it doesn't pop up.

What steps can reproduce the bug?

invoke skill with $, click skill

What is the expected behavior?

_No response_

Additional information

_No response_

View original on GitHub ↗

5 Comments

kendonB · 3 months ago

Does work after the first message has been sent but not while it's in the unsent chat.

github-actions[bot] contributor · 3 months ago

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

#21412

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kendonB · 3 months ago

I believe this is a general windows app issue that skills text as a file link only work after the message has been sent, whereas the behaviour should be that the skill should act like a link after being put into the chat text box but still unsent

Rat0323 · 29 days ago

Still reproducible on the current Windows desktop package OpenAI.Codex_26.721.4979.0_x64__2p2nqsd0c76g0.

The exact behavior remains:

Select a skill in the unsent composer and click the inline skill mention -> the internal SKILL.md tab opens but displays Tab content cannot be displayed.
Send the message, then click the rendered skill link -> the same file opens successfully in VS Code.

Current renderer error:

TypeError: Cannot read properties of null (reading 'dirname')
    at P6i (app://-/assets/app-initial-BbEVL4-_.js:4893:110724)
    at pB  (app://-/assets/app-initial-BbEVL4-_.js:4893:105207)

The unsent mention contains the correct readable Windows path in skill-mention-path and data-prompt-link-href. The exception occurs synchronously before a file-read RPC.

A useful control test: changing only the in-memory preview target from C:\Users\...\SKILL.md to /C:/Users/.../SKILL.md makes the built-in tab display the same file successfully.

The Microsoft Store app.asar and the runtime-served renderer asset match exactly (SHA-256 B7255AE117A54BF16C7F45834054CD16ABD9B24CF5AA9DBD7C796F59743E556A). The packaged preview helper selects path.win32.dirname(...) for the Windows path, while the bundled browser path implementation has win32: null.

This appears to be the same underlying Windows renderer defect now documented for another preview surface in #35441. I added the longer cross-surface evidence there as well: https://github.com/openai/codex/issues/35441#issuecomment-5123447773

No model/API request is involved in this failure, so authentication or provider routing is not on the failing path.

kendonB · 23 days ago

this is fixed