Chronicle consumes 5-hour quota for Plus users without a UI disable control

What version of Codex is running?

Codex Desktop macOS app: 26.513.31313 (CFBundleVersion 2867)

Codex CLI: codex-cli 0.130.0

What subscription do you have?

ChatGPT Plus / non-Pro.

What issue are you seeing?

Codex Chronicle ran background screen/memory summarization even though I had not intentionally used Codex that day. The usage UI showed about 16% of the 5-hour Codex usage window already consumed.

Because this account is not Pro, I do not appear to have a visible UI setting to disable Chronicle / passive context / screen memory from the Codex app. The feature still ran and consumed the same user-facing 5-hour Codex quota.

Local evidence:

• ~/.codex/config.toml contained:

[features]
chronicle = true
memories = true
multi_agent = true

• A live background Chronicle process was running:

/Applications/Codex.app/Contents/Resources/codex_chronicle

• Codex logs showed Chronicle taking frequent screen samples after user input:

chronicle observed recent user input; pulling next display sample forward
wrote snapshot of latest frame
chronicle selected visual activity evidence
wrote sparse memory frame

• Chronicle generated multiple local summaries under:

~/.codex/memories/extensions/chronicle/resources/

Examples from the same usage window:

2026-05-17T01-30-00-FWtI-10min-memory-summary.md
2026-05-17T01-40-00-EmHA-10min-memory-summary.md
2026-05-17T01-50-00-bpaU-10min-memory-summary.md
2026-05-17T02-00-00-xPOR-10min-memory-summary.md
2026-05-17T02-10-00-ERXd-10min-memory-summary.md

• Some related Chronicle summaries were generated even when the referenced capture artifacts were missing or empty. Several generated files explicitly said no durable memory could be extracted because OCR/frame files were missing or frame directories were empty.

• During investigation, a visible Codex turn logged a rate-limit event showing the 5-hour window usage around the same level:

limit_id: codex
primary.used_percent: 15.0
primary.window_minutes: 300
plan_type: plus

Expected behavior

Chronicle / passive screen memory should not silently consume the same 5-hour user-facing Codex quota without a clear control path.

At minimum:

• Plus / non-Pro users should be able to disable Chronicle if it consumes quota.
• The usage UI should distinguish user-initiated chat/work from background Chronicle/memory work.
• Chronicle should not send model requests for windows with missing OCR/frame artifacts or empty capture directories.
• If Chronicle is enabled by config or experiment, the app should surface that state and provide a kill switch.

Actual behavior

Chronicle was running in the background and generating memory summaries. The user-facing 5-hour Codex quota showed usage even before I intentionally started a Codex task that day. I could not find a UI setting to disable Chronicle because the account is not Pro.

The only reliable workaround was to manually edit local config:

[features]
chronicle = false

and then kill the current codex_chronicle process.

Why this matters

This is a quota and transparency issue:

• A background Codex-owned process consumes the same quota as intentional visible work.
• Non-Pro users may not have the UI controls needed to stop it.
• The generated memories can be low-value browsing summaries, and some runs appear to summarize missing/empty capture windows.
• From the user perspective, the 5-hour usage meter looks consumed despite "not using Codex".

Requested fix

Please add a visible disable/pause control for Chronicle for all users whose quota can be consumed by it, surface Chronicle usage separately in the usage UI, and skip model summarization when capture artifacts are missing or empty.