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Codex Issues / #31026

BioRender app connector exposes search tools but backend returns "Tool ... not found"

Open 💬 4 comments Opened Jul 3, 2026 by qcr0519

Summary

The BioRender app/connector in Codex Desktop is discovered locally and exposes two tools, but both tool calls fail at runtime because the connector backend reports that the underlying tools do not exist.

This appears to be an upstream BioRender/OpenAI app connector tool registration mismatch rather than a local cache/install problem.

Environment

  • Product: Codex Desktop on Windows
  • Date of retest: 2026-07-03
  • Connector: BioRender
  • Connector id: connector_691e3de0d2708191a6476a7b36e38779
  • Link id observed in Apps tools cache: link_6a2a636b42d08191bfca25375991bc1a
  • Local BioRender plugin cache observed:
  • openai-curated/biorender: version 1.0.2
  • openai-curated-remote/biorender: version 1.0.0, regenerated automatically after restart

Expected Behavior

Calling the discovered BioRender tools should return matching icons/templates:

  • biorender.search-icons
  • biorender.search-templates

Actual Behavior

The tools are exposed/discovered by Codex, but calls fail:

MCP error -32602: Tool search-icons not found
MCP error -32602: Tool search-templates not found

Representative failed calls:

  • mcp__codex_apps__biorender._search_icons with query mitochondria
  • mcp__codex_apps__biorender._search_templates with query GLP-1 pathway

Local Remediation Already Tried

All of the following were tried and the error remained unchanged:

  1. Cleared Codex Apps discovery/runtime cache:
  • codex_apps_tools
  • codex_apps_server_info
  • codex_app_directory
  1. Cleared BioRender local plugin cache.
  2. Cleared remote plugin catalog cache.
  3. Restarted Codex Desktop after cache cleanup.
  4. Disconnected and reconnected BioRender in the Apps/Connectors UI, then restarted Codex Desktop.
  5. Removed both BioRender cache branches and allowed Codex to redownload/regenerate them.
  6. Removed the older openai-curated-remote/biorender branch to try keeping only version 1.0.2; after restart, Codex regenerated the 1.0.0 remote branch automatically.

Control Check

Other app connectors appear to work in the same Codex environment. For example, the GitHub connector successfully returned repository search results after these tests. This suggests the Apps connector bus is generally functional and the failure is isolated to BioRender.

Interpretation

Codex discovers and exposes BioRender tools in local Apps metadata, but the BioRender/OpenAI connector backend rejects the underlying tool names (search-icons and search-templates). Please check whether the BioRender connector registration maps the exposed tools to the backend MCP tool names correctly.

I can provide the full local maintenance log if helpful, but I have intentionally omitted local filesystem paths and account-specific details from this public issue.

View original on GitHub ↗

4 Comments

jafarkrg9-creator · 1 month ago

Same problems.

tangweigang-jpg · 1 month ago

The useful split here is between the Codex-facing wrapper name and the backend MCP tool name. The local surface exposes mcp__codex_apps__biorender._search_icons, but the backend error is for search-icons, so I would treat this as a registration/name-translation boundary rather than another client cache case.

One extra artifact that may help maintainers: capture the Apps tool descriptor for the two exposed functions and the failing request id from the same session. If the descriptor advertises _search_icons while the backend registry only accepts a different canonical name, that narrows it to the connector manifest or adapter mapping layer.

jafarkrg9-creator · 1 month ago

I can reproduce this as well.

Exposed local tools:

  • mcp__codex_apps__biorender._search_icons
  • mcp__codex_apps__biorender._search_templates

Representative calls:

  • _search_icons query: mitochondria
  • _search_templates query: GLP-1 pathway

Observed errors:

  • MCP error -32602: Tool search-icons not found
  • MCP error -32602: Tool search-templates not found

The tool response did not surface a request id to the model/session output.
This looks like the Codex Apps wrapper exposes _search_icons / _search_templates,
but the backend registry rejects canonical names search-icons / search-templates.

athan614 · 1 month ago

I can reproduce as well:
Plugin: biorender@openai-curated-remote

Tool: _search_icons
Request: {"query":"DNA"}
Response: {"error_code":"INVALID_ARGUMENT"}

Tool: _search_templates
Result: {"error_code":"INVALID_ARGUMENT"}