Codex tasks regressed from under 5 minutes to 30-50 minutes

Open 💬 4 comments Opened Jun 13, 2026 by mazukabz

💡 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?

Version 26.609.41114, released Jun 12, 2026.

What subscription do you have?

Not sure / user account details not included in this report.

What platform is your computer?

macOS, using the Codex desktop app.

What issue are you seeing?

Codex has become dramatically slower for normal project work. Tasks that used to complete in under ~5 minutes are now taking roughly 30-50 minutes.

A recent concrete example: Codex worked for 43m 56s on a task that mainly involved documenting/continuing an existing project task, updating analytics/task/backlog/session files, adding a backend slice, and running checks/smoke tests. This kind of workflow used to complete much faster in the same project.

The slowdown feels like a general throughput/regression issue rather than a project-specific blocker:

long stretches of waiting while Codex is thinking or performing routine tool work;
small/medium documentation + code tasks now take tens of minutes;
the issue is significant enough that the normal Codex workflow is becoming hard to use interactively.

What steps can reproduce the bug?

Open an existing medium-sized project in the Codex desktop app.
Ask Codex to continue a documented task from project files, update task/backlog/session documentation, make a small backend implementation slice, and run normal checks.
Observe that the end-to-end turn takes 30-50 minutes instead of the previous under-5-minute range for comparable work.

What is the expected behavior?

Comparable project tasks should complete in the previous latency range, or at least not regress by ~6-10x for ordinary work. Routine file reads/edits/checks should not turn into 30-50 minute runs unless the task is genuinely large or blocked.

Additional information

This looks related to several recent performance reports, but I am filing a separate issue because the symptom is an end-to-end agentic task latency regression, not only startup latency or UI lag:

#27491
#27531
#21527
#24260

The latest observed task duration was 43m 56s on Friday, June 12, 2026.

View original on GitHub ↗

4 Comments

github-actions[bot] contributor · 2 months ago

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

#27755
#27531
#27491
#27661
#27559

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mazukabz · 2 months ago

Update: the problem is still happening and has become a hard blocker.

New incident on Jun 14, 2026:

User request was a narrow implementation task: adjust generated/current idea-list hook headlines while keeping real film titles on detail pages.
Codex worked for 1h 8m 22s and still had not reached the actual edit/verification phase.
Most of the visible work was routine context loading/searching: reading project instructions, sessions/INDEX.md, UI kit docs, checking git status, searching for headline/title/composer fields, and reading a handful of backend/frontend files.
This is exactly the kind of task that previously would be expected to take around 5 minutes, not more than an hour.

This is now blocking normal use of Codex for day-to-day project development. Please escalate/triage as a serious performance regression in the Codex desktop app / agent runtime, not just a one-off slow task.

Codex app version: 26.609.41114, released Jun 12, 2026.

vicentesurraco · 2 months ago

+1 - its been extremely slow for several days on desktop. CLI is still fast

SREDevOpsNL · 2 months ago

+1 — I am seeing a very similar regression, but on a newer Codex Desktop version.

Codex app version:
26.609.71450, released Jun 16, 2026

Platform:
Windows, Codex desktop app

Account:
Personal ChatGPT Plus account

Feedback ID:
019e97a5-b545-7641-bcec-cfcd9b53fca2

Issue:
After updating to 26.609.71450, Codex started over-expanding narrow tasks and spending a very long time on work that should be a small maintenance fix.

Concrete case:
I asked Codex to fix a simple smoke-test video artifact path mismatch.

Original request, shortened/sanitized:

Video of a demo smoke test run is moved to another folder: <repo>\test\test-results\smoke-artifacts\pvw-ui-smoke-demo\20260614-013147\01_PVW-US-09-...\playwright\videos\<test-name>\<hash>.webm Please check that smoke tests use again: <repo>\test\test-results\smoke-artifacts\pvw-ui-smoke-demo\20260614-013147\01_PVW-US-09-... where 20260614-013147 is DateTime-UniqueNumber specific to that test run.

Expected behavior:
Codex should keep the task narrow:

identify why the raw Playwright video remains nested under playwright\videos\...;
copy/promote the reviewer-facing video back to the scenario folder root, e.g. demo.webm;
make the minimal code/path fix if needed;
stop after minimal verification.

Actual behavior:
Codex worked for 3h 20m 33s and still did not properly complete the simple requested fix. It drifted into broader, unnecessary work such as:

reading startup/project context;
investigating runner behavior too broadly;
improving timestamp collision handling;
editing docs/runbooks;
editing review-pack notes;
changing more files than needed for the immediate path mismatch.

Codex later admitted the scope drift itself:

“You’re right to be angry. I overworked a simple artifact-path fix.” “I correctly identified that the raw Playwright video was nested under playwright\videos\<test-name>\<hash>.webm.” “I did copy it to the scenario root as demo.webm.” “Then I drifted into ‘improving’ the runner, docs, timestamp collision handling, and review-pack wording. That was not necessary for the immediate fix.”

Impact:
This consumed a large amount of Codex quota and made the desktop app unreliable for small maintenance tasks. The issue is not only raw slowness; it is also task-scope drift combined with very long agent runtime.

Why I think it is related to this issue:
The visible behavior matches the regression described here: narrow tasks that previously should have taken a few minutes now take tens of minutes or hours, with long stretches of context loading/searching/tool work before reaching the actual edit/verification phase.

Request:
Please treat this as a serious Codex Desktop agent-runtime regression affecting:

task scoping;
no-progress detection;
excessive context loading;
long-running task control;
quota consumption for small tasks.

I have uploaded in-app feedback from the affected Codex session.

Feedback ID:
019e97a5-b545-7641-bcec-cfcd9b53fca2