Codex Desktop automation Run Now creates empty sessions and never executes prompt

Open 💬 3 comments Opened May 10, 2026 by stheologo

💡 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)?

26.5063.31.31421

What subscription do you have?

Plus

What platform is your computer?

Windows 11 Home edition, X64

What issue are you seeing?

Issue:
When I click Run now on a Codex Desktop automation, Codex creates a session file, but the session contains only session_meta and never executes the automation prompt.

Evidence:

Direct Gmail connector works from normal chat.
Direct Gmail send works from normal chat.
Cron automation "Gmail Automation Smoke Test" creates a session:

C:\Users\.codex\sessions\2026\05\10\rollout-2026-05-10T20-11-36-019e10f1-1776-7123-8559-a79e8efa5342.jsonl

That file has exactly 1 JSONL entry: session_meta only.
No user prompt, no tool calls, no final output, no error.
Heartbeat automation also did not fire.

Expected:
Run Now should execute the automation prompt.

Actual:
Run Now creates a session, then nothing happens.

What steps can reproduce the bug?

Create an automation to send an email using gmail.

What is the expected behavior?

_No response_

Additional information

_No response_

View original on GitHub ↗

3 Comments

github-actions[bot] contributor · 3 months ago

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

#21344
#21630
#20772

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Rovynhq · 3 months ago

I am seeing the same failure pattern on Windows.

Environment:

Codex Desktop: 26.506.31421
Codex engine/CLI observed in local session metadata: 0.130.0-alpha.5
Platform: Windows
Execution environment: local
Shell: PowerShell

What works:

Normal Codex chats work.
Manually typing into the automation-created chat works.
The automation-created chat can access the intended workspace when prompted manually.

What fails:

Both scheduled automation runs and manual "play/run now" runs create a new automation chat/session, but no assistant turn starts.
The prompt appears in the automation chat, but there is no assistant response unless I manually type a message into that chat.
This reproduces with a UI-created no-tool smoke test automation: Say "automation test ran" and then stop. Do not use tools.
It also reproduces with a harmless diagnostic automation that only lists files in a local input folder.

Observed local state for failed automation-created threads:

model = null
reasoning_effort = null
has_user_event = 0
no model response
no tool calls
no output/result
logs show active_turn_present=false active_turn_id=None active_turn_status=None

This does not appear to be a workspace permission or prompt issue, because the same automation chat responds normally when I manually type into it. It looks like the automation run creates the thread/chat but does not dispatch the configured automation prompt as a runnable model turn.

Rovynhq · 2 months ago

Follow-up: this still reproduces after updating Codex Desktop and testing with the app launched as Administrator.

Latest harmless smoke test result:

a new automation thread/session was created
the configured prompt was not dispatched as a runnable model turn
model = null
reasoning_effort = null
has_user_event = 0
tokens_used = 0
no assistant output, tool call, or completion event was produced

Running as Administrator did not change the result. This is consistent with the newer matching report #24905, which notes that elevated launch can resolve Windows sandbox setup errors while the separate automation prompt-dispatch failure remains.

The affected filing automation remains paused because the UI can otherwise show an indefinitely spinning run even though no actual work has started.