Codex Desktop in WSL mode takes 1-2 minutes per response when plugins are enabled

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

26.602.40724

What subscription do you have?

Plus

What platform is your computer?

Microsoft Windows NT 10.0.26200.0 x64

What issue are you seeing?

Codex Desktop becomes extremely slow when the agent runs in WSL mode and plugins are enabled. Even a clean prompt that requires no tools can take approximately 1-2 minutes.

The delay is reproducible outside the Desktop UI with the WSL Codex CLI. The logs show that Codex repeatedly attempts to synchronize the curated plugin repository during startup. The repository is stored under the Windows Codex home mounted in WSL (an anonymized path equivalent to /mnt/c/Users/<user>/.codex).

The Git synchronization attempts to check out approximately 4,880 files on /mnt/c, times out after 30 seconds, and then falls back to GitHub HTTP synchronization. Disabling the plugins feature reduces the same clean request from 91-114 seconds to about 6 seconds.

This is not general OpenAI model latency:

• Codex Desktop using the Windows-native agent answers in approximately 3-5 seconds.
• ChatGPT on the web answers quickly on the same account and network.
• A direct HTTPS request from WSL completes in approximately 51 ms.
• Basic WSL shell commands complete in well under one second.

Relevant sanitized warnings:

failed to warm featured plugin ids cache:
failed to send remote plugin sync request to
https://chatgpt.com/backend-api/plugins/featured

git sync failed for curated plugin sync; falling back to GitHub HTTP
error=git clone curated plugins repo timed out after 30s
Updating files: ... /4880

The UI spends most of this time at:

Loading skills...
Connecting MCP...
Scanning tools...
Waiting for server...

What steps can reproduce the bug?

1. Install Codex Desktop on Windows.
2. Configure the Codex agent to run in WSL2.
3. Keep plugins enabled.
4. Restart Codex Desktop.
5. Create a new empty project or use an empty directory.
6. Send a minimal prompt:

``text
Reply with only: OK
``

1. Observe that the response takes approximately 1-2 minutes.

The issue can also be reproduced directly in WSL:

time codex exec --skip-git-repo-check "Reply with only: OK"

Measured results:

| Test | Result |
|---|---:|
| WSL, plugins enabled | 1m 53.7s |
| WSL, plugins enabled, repeated test | 1m 31.7s |
| WSL, plugins temporarily disabled | 6.2s |
| Windows-native Codex Desktop | approximately 3-5s |

Control command:

time codex exec --disable plugins --skip-git-repo-check "Reply with only: OK"

The control returned OK in approximately 6.2 seconds.

Additional controls:

WSL interactive Bash startup: approximately 0.2-0.4s
WSL HTTPS request: DNS 9ms, TLS 40ms, total 51ms

The curated plugin cache contained approximately 172 plugin directories and 4,880 repository files. Codex Desktop passed a Windows Codex home into WSL, making it available through an anonymized path equivalent to:

/mnt/c/Users/<user>/.codex

The delay persisted after upgrading Windows Subsystem for Linux from 2.6.3.0 to 2.7.3.0.

What is the expected behavior?

Codex Desktop should not perform a slow full curated-plugin synchronization on every WSL startup or request.

Plugin metadata should be cached and reused, synchronization should run asynchronously without blocking the model request, or the plugin cache used by the WSL agent should be stored on the Linux filesystem rather than under /mnt/c.

A minimal prompt should respond within approximately the same time as:

• Windows-native Codex Desktop; or
• WSL Codex with plugins temporarily disabled.

Additional information

Environment:

Codex Desktop: 26.602.4764
Bundled Codex CLI: 0.137.0-alpha.4
Agent environment: WSL2, Ubuntu
WSL version tested: 2.7.3.0
WSL kernel: 6.6.114.1-microsoft-standard-WSL2
Model tested: GPT-5.5, medium reasoning

The behavior is not specific to GPT-5.5; other models in Codex showed similar latency.

The workaround is to disable plugins:

[features]
plugins = false

Final confirmation: after setting [features] plugins = false and restarting Codex Desktop in WSL mode, responses became fast immediately. Re-enabling plugins restores the 1–2 minute delay. However, this removes plugin functionality and is not suitable for users who need both WSL mode and plugins.

No thread IDs, session IDs, account identifiers, usernames, hostnames, IP addresses, authentication data, or unredacted personal paths are included in this report.