Codex Desktop ambient_suggestions consumes ~70k tokens in the background

Codex version

Codex Desktop for Windows 26.623.5546.0

Environment

• Windows 11 Pro
• Codex Desktop signed in with ChatGPT
• Date observed: 2026-06-28
• No app-server reconnects were recorded during the affected period

Problem

Codex Desktop generated home-page ambient suggestions in background/ephemeral turns and consumed a very large amount of included usage despite no corresponding user-requested response.

The desktop log recorded two successful ephemeral_generation_token_usage events for feature=ambient_suggestions:

| Time (UTC) | Model | Input | Cached input | Output | Reasoning output | Total |
|---|---:|---:|---:|---:|---:|---:|
| 2026-06-28 00:28:15 | gpt-5.4 | 34,478 | 34,176 | 157 | 140 | 34,635 |
| 2026-06-28 00:28:24 | gpt-5.4 | 35,776 | 34,688 | 15 | 0 | 35,791 |
| Total | | 70,254 | 68,864 | 172 | 140 | 70,426 |

The app also logged the generated turns as unknown conversations:

Received turn/started for unknown conversation
ephemeral_generation_token_usage feature=ambient_suggestions ...
Received turn/completed for unknown conversation

The installed app bundle indicates that ambient-suggestions-enabled defaults to true.

Steps to reproduce

1. Open Codex Desktop with existing long conversations/projects.
2. Visit or remain on the home page.
3. Wait for ambient suggestions to appear.
4. Inspect the desktop log for ephemeral_generation_token_usage feature=ambient_suggestions.

Expected behavior

Background home-page suggestions should not silently consume a large amount of the user's included Codex quota. At minimum, the feature should clearly disclose its usage impact and expose an obvious opt-out before generation.

Actual behavior

Two unsolicited background generations consumed 70,426 total tokens in roughly nine seconds. The visible generated output was only 172 tokens.

Additional notes

• This was not caused by network reconnect retries: the desktop log showed zero non-zero reconnect attempts during the affected app session.
• Please confirm whether ambient_suggestions usage is intended to count against user limits.
• Please consider disabling the feature by default, limiting context size, or making the opt-out prominent.
• Please advise whether quota consumed by these background generations can be restored.

Sensitive account information and conversation text have intentionally been omitted.