error 400 'Instructions are not valid' after prompt.md change #3121
Resolved 💬 6 comments Opened Sep 4, 2025 by salah9003 Closed Sep 4, 2025
💡 Likely answer: A maintainer (gpeal, contributor)
responded on this thread — see the highlighted reply below.
What version of Codex is running?
Building from main branch (commit 234c0a04)
Which model were you using?
gpt-5
What platform is your computer?
Windows x64
What steps can reproduce the bug?
- Build Codex from main branch source
- Run
codexTUI - Send any message
What is the expected behavior?
Message should be processed normally
What do you see instead?
⚠️ stream error: unexpected status 400 Bad Request: {"detail":"Instructions are not valid"};
Additional information
Root cause: PR #3121 ("remove bold the keyword from prompt") removed line "- Bold the keyword, then colon + concise description." from codex-rs/core/prompt.md
6 Comments
This is intentional.
@gpeal this is still broken though.
its not a bug, its a fea...
0.29.0 runs fine, but the latest release 0.29.1-alpha.7 has errors.
working commit: https://github.com/openai/codex/commit/6b83c1c3f3dacf6da342706098f1cb04335e8217
https://github.com/openai/codex/issues/3202#issuecomment-3259520225
@gpeal Is there any chance that the infra could be adjusted to simply... use the prompt that's on master, rather than only release prompts? That way those in the community looking to help out don't have to search for a prompt that's been registered as approved, or constantly switch to API auth?