Codex Desktop loses local shell/file-edit tool availability mid-session

What version of the Codex App are you using (From “About Codex” dialog)?

About dialog not checked; session metadata reports cli_version 0.136.0-alpha.2

What subscription do you have?

Enterprise/work account

What platform is your computer?

Darwin 25.3.0 arm64 arm

What issue are you seeing?

During a long, tool-heavy Codex Desktop iOS development session, local developer tools stopped being available after they had worked earlier in the same session.

This is a redacted public report. I am not attaching the raw session log because it contains private repo context.

Observed:

• Codex successfully used local shell/file tools earlier in the session.
• It verified a private local repo state.
• It confirmed Xcode command-line tools were available: xcodebuild and xcrun.
• It read a Swift file from disk.
• A few minutes later, in the same session, it stopped with: "my local shell/file-edit tools are unavailable in this turn."

This did not look like a local command failure, Xcode failure, simulator failure, or sandbox/approval denial. The machine/toolchain had just been verified healthy.

What steps can reproduce the bug?

Approximate repro:

1. Start a Codex Desktop session in a local workspace with full local access.
2. Run a long, tool-heavy iOS development workflow: shell commands, file reads, image/video analysis, planning, and attempted edits.
3. Let the session cross a long turn / resume / context-heavy boundary.
4. Ask Codex to make edits.
5. Observe that the assistant says local shell/file-edit tools are unavailable instead of calling exec_command / file-edit tools.

Session context at the time of failure:

• approval_policy: never
• sandbox_policy: danger-full-access
• permission_profile: disabled
• model: gpt-5.5
• cli_version from session metadata: 0.136.0-alpha.2
• token usage was high/context-heavy near the failure
• public line refs withheld because the raw log contains private repo context; I can provide sanitized excerpts if useful.

The key distinguishing detail: local tools had worked earlier in the same session, including checking xcodebuild/xcrun and reading a Swift file. Then the tool surface disappeared.

What is the expected behavior?

If local developer tools worked earlier in the same full-access Codex Desktop session, exec_command and file-edit tools should remain available throughout the turn/session, or fail with a clear recoverable runtime error that explains why local tool access changed.

Additional information

Hypothesis: Codex Desktop tool bridge/session state may be dropping or invalidating the local developer tools/functions namespace after long, tool-heavy turns, resume, or context compaction. iOS work may only be correlated because these sessions tend to be long and tool-heavy.

I found adjacent reports/chatter about apply_patch availability problems, but this pattern appears broader: the model no longer had or believed it had shell/file-edit tools after they had already worked.