VS Code extension crashes on startup with "interface.defaultPrompt: maximum of 3 prompts is supported"

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

• #30262

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Couple notes:

This happens based on things that I am assuming ship with Codex itself it seems so users seem very likely to hit it without generating or using any invalid plugins of their own fault:

<img width="1185" height="372" alt="Image" src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/b6da82b3-120e-41fc-9d93-13abf8b92dac" />

And I have found there seems to be a related MR to potentially gracefully handle this that seems not mentioned / connected to this issue yet : https://github.com/openai/codex/issues/30262 . However it seems to be stalled at this point.

Additional confirmation from Codex Desktop on Windows.

Environment:

• Codex Desktop: OpenAI.Codex_26.623.19656.0_x64
• Platform: Windows 11, PowerShell shell
• Runtime plugin: template-creator version 26.630.12135
• Problematic manifest path:

C:\Users\Administrator\.cache\codex-runtimes\codex-primary-runtime\plugins\openai-primary-runtime\plugins\template-creator\.codex-plugin\plugin.json

Observed crash/error overlay:

(code=3221225786, signal=null)
Most recent error: ... WARN ...
ignoring interface.defaultPrompt: maximum of 3 prompts is supported
path=C:\Users\Administrator\.cache\codex-runtimes\codex-primary-runtime\plugins\openai-primary-runtime\plugins\template-creator\.codex-plugin\plugin.json
target=codex_core_plugins::manifest

Local verification:

• The bundled template-creator manifest contains 4 interface.defaultPrompt entries.
• Other bundled primary-runtime artifact plugins on this machine (documents, pdf, presentations, spreadsheets) have 3 entries each.
• Repeated rows in C:\Users\Administrator\.codex\logs_2.sqlite show the warning while loading discoverable tools:

built_tools.load_discoverable_tools:list_tool_suggest_discoverable_tools_with_auth:list_tool_suggest_discoverable_plugins

• The same warning appears across different threads/cwds, including a normal project cwd and the global setup thread.

Diagnostic self-corrections / caveats:

• At first I treated the manifest warning as the likely root cause too strongly. After checking Windows Event Viewer, I did not find a matching Application Error / Windows Error Reporting Codex crash event in the inspected window.
• 3221225786 is 0xC000013A, which usually means the process was interrupted/terminated, so the manifest warning may be the last surfaced error rather than the only process-exit cause.
• One local PowerShell check initially failed because of my malformed Sort-Object command syntax; rerunning with a simpler command confirmed the manifest count correctly. That failed check was an agent command error, not evidence of a broken Windows/PowerShell environment.

Current assessment:
This still looks like a real bundled runtime manifest defect: template-creator@openai-primary-runtime ships 4 default prompts while the current Codex runtime supports a maximum of 3. Even if it is not the sole cause of every crash overlay, the bad manifest is reproducible locally and is being repeatedly validated during tool discovery.

Expected behavior:

• Bundled OpenAI runtime plugin manifests should satisfy the current schema/limit.
• A bad bundled plugin manifest should not crash or destabilize Codex Desktop / app-server / local exec.
• If extra prompts are ignored, that should be isolated and non-fatal.

Duplicate/noise cleanup from my side.

I accidentally posted a second near-duplicate Windows data point a couple of minutes after my previous comment. To avoid adding noise to the issue thread, please treat the previous comment as the consolidated diagnostic report:

https://github.com/openai/codex/issues/30360#issuecomment-4908358414

The only extra emphasis from this duplicate was:

• the Windows overlay showed code=3221225786, signal=null;
• 3221225786 maps to 0xC000013A, so this case should be described as an interrupted/terminated app-server/Codex process rather than a proven classic crash from Event Viewer alone;
• no matching Codex.exe Application Error / WER event and no Codex dump were found in the checked window;
• the bundled template-creator 26.630.12135 manifest still reproducibly contains 4 interface.defaultPrompt entries while the runtime supports a maximum of 3;
• my own earlier diagnostic mistake was treating the overlay's “most recent error” as definitely causal before checking Event Viewer/crash dumps, plus one malformed PowerShell inventory command that I reran correctly.

Sorry for the duplicate. The actionable product-side request remains: the bundled template-creator manifest should either be reduced to 3 default prompts, the supported limit should be raised, or the plugin loader should ignore extra prompts without surfacing a crash/error overlay.

I am not sure the proper way to get this more visibility but if anyone knows who should be tagged please do - in short I believe that right now the codex vs-code extension is basically completely broken/unusable (unless someone knows a workaround do please share).

@fcoury-oai I came across you as a reviewer of some previous vs-code extension related MRs in this repo - any chance you would please have tips on what should be done to get this issue visibility?