Codex gets stuck repeating commentary with no new output and keeps consuming tokens

Open 💬 2 comments Opened Jun 23, 2026 by MaYo-TEst

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

26.616.71553

What subscription do you have?

plus

What platform is your computer?

Windows 11

What issue are you seeing?

Codex sometimes gets stuck repeating similar commentary messages without making actual progress, and the thread stays in an in-progress / thinking state for a long time while continuing to consume tokens.

I have seen this happen across multiple threads, not just once.

What happens:

  • Codex keeps sending repeated progress-style messages with the same meaning
  • It says things like it is about to fix something, generate a result, or make a local edit
  • But no new output is produced
  • No clear blocking reason is given
  • The thread can remain stuck for a long time

In one case, the thread stayed stuck for about 1 hour.
During that time, it kept producing repeated commentary, but:

  • no new image was generated
  • no final answer was produced
  • no clear error message was shown

Why this seems wrong:

  • It looks like Codex is still "thinking", but it is not actually making progress
  • It keeps consuming tokens while repeating the same kind of intermediate messages
  • Older sessions did not seem to behave like this as often

What steps can reproduce the bug?

  1. Start a Codex thread to generate or edit an image.
  2. Review the result and ask for a small localized correction.
  3. Continue with a few rounds of follow-up detail edits.
  4. At some point, Codex stops returning actual updated images.
  5. Instead, it keeps repeating similar commentary such as saying it is about to fix the image or generate the final version.
  6. The thread stays stuck in a thinking / in-progress state for a long time without a final result or clear failure message.

What is the expected behavior?

If Codex cannot make progress, it should stop repeating commentary
It should either produce a real new result, clearly report the blocking reason, or terminate the run gracefully

Additional information

_No response_

View original on GitHub ↗

This issue has 2 comments on GitHub. Read the full discussion on GitHub ↗