VS Code Codex extension spawns dozens of concurrent ripgrep processes for plugin asset lookups

What version of the IDE extension are you using?

26.506.31421

What subscription do you have?

ChatGPT Pro

Which IDE are you using?

VS Code

What platform is your computer?

macOS, Apple Silicon / ARM64

What issue are you seeing?

The Codex/OpenAI VS Code extension spawned dozens of concurrent rg --files processes while resolving Codex plugin/skill asset files under ~/.codex/plugins/cache/openai-curated/.... This caused severe CPU load and made the machine effectively unusable. This has happened a number of times and not initiated by the user. On different occasions 50 and 74 copies, overwhelming the CPUs and making the machine unusable for extended periods.

What steps can reproduce the bug?

1. Open a large VS Code workspace with the OpenAI/Codex extension enabled.
2. Start or resume a Codex session in the workspace.
3. Have Codex load or reference installed plugin/skill metadata/assets, for example GitHub, Linear, Notion, Slack, or Teams skills.
4. Watch running processes with Activity Monitor or ps.
5. Observe many concurrent VS Code ripgrep processes spawned with commands like rg --files ... ~/.codex/plugins/cache/openai-curated/.../assets/....

I did not explicitly ask Codex to run rg; these processes were spawned by the VS Code extension/app-server while resolving plugin or skill asset files.

What is the expected behavior?

The Codex VS Code extension should resolve plugin/skill asset files without spawning dozens of concurrent ripgrep processes.

Expected behaviour:

• Use direct file paths or cached asset metadata where possible.
• Bound any filesystem search concurrency.
• Avoid broad rg --files --no-ignore --follow scans for each individual asset.
• Keep CPU usage low enough that the IDE and local dev/test processes remain responsive.

Additional information

Additional context:

• The spawned processes used VS Code’s bundled ripgrep binary:

/Applications/Visual Studio Code.app/Contents/Resources/app/node_modules/@vscode/ripgrep/bin/rg

• The parent process was the VS Code extension host, which also had the Codex app-server child:

~/.vscode/extensions/openai.chatgpt-26.506.31421-darwin-arm64/bin/macos-aarch64/codex app-server --analytics-default-enabled

• The ripgrep commands targeted Codex plugin/skill asset paths such as:

~/.codex/plugins/cache/openai-curated/github/.../assets/github.png
~/.codex/plugins/cache/openai-curated/linear/.../assets/linear.png
~/.codex/plugins/cache/openai-curated/notion/.../assets/notion.png
~/.codex/plugins/cache/openai-curated/slack/.../assets/slack.png
~/.codex/plugins/cache/openai-curated/teams/.../assets/teams.svg

• The commands included flags like:

--files --hidden --case-sensitive --no-require-git --no-ignore --follow --no-config --no-ignore-global

• This was not an intentional repo search requested by the user. It appeared to be internal extension/plugin asset resolution.

• Impact: CPU spiked heavily, and the local development/test workflow became effectively unusable until the processes completed.