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Codex Issues / #37783

[ChatGPT Chronicle] System Skill Creator is deleted from shared system Skills

Open 💬 3 comments Opened Aug 10, 2026 by omarpinarecords

Summary

A ChatGPT Chronicle/background run deletes the canonical system Skill Creator from the shared Codex system-Skills installation.

The Chronicle worker starts the bundled Codex runtime with skills.bundled.enabled=false. The resulting cleanup appears to remove the shared $CODEX_HOME/skills/.system directory instead of merely disabling bundled Skills for that worker. The system Skill Creator then becomes unavailable to unrelated, ordinary Codex tasks.

This report concerns the canonical OpenAI-provided system Skill Creator—not a personal or copied substitute.

This have been like that since codex app released months ago, this is unacceptable.

Affected environment

  • ChatGPT Desktop: 26.803.41515 (build 6321)
  • Bundled Codex CLI: 0.147.0-alpha.6.5
  • macOS: 26.6.1, Apple silicon

Reproduction

  1. Start ChatGPT Desktop and confirm the canonical system Skill Creator is present under $CODEX_HOME/skills/.system/skill-creator.
  2. Enable Chronicle and allow a Chronicle background task to start.
  3. Observe that the Chronicle worker invokes the bundled Codex runtime with skills.bundled.enabled=false.
  4. Inspect the shared system-Skills installation after the worker starts.
  5. Start an unrelated Codex task and attempt to use the system Skill Creator.

Actual result

  • $CODEX_HOME/skills/.system is removed.
  • The canonical system Skill Creator disappears and cannot be discovered by later ordinary tasks.
  • The system OpenAI Docs Skill disappears in the same event, confirming that this is a shared system-directory mutation rather than a failure isolated to one Skill.
  • A fresh normal Codex startup can restore the bundled system Skills, but a later Chronicle run removes them again.
  • Turning Chronicle off prevents recurrence only after any already-running Chronicle worker exits.

The deletion is also reproducible with a disposable CODEX_HOME, without user cleanup scripts or scheduled automations.

Expected result

skills.bundled.enabled=false should control availability only for that worker. It must not delete, overwrite, or mutate the shared canonical system-Skills installation.

In particular, a Chronicle task must never uninstall the system Skill Creator used by other tasks.

Related upstream work

This may share the cleanup defect reported in #19265 and addressed by #36989, but the currently distributed ChatGPT Desktop build above still reproduces the Chronicle-specific Skill Creator failure.

Please confirm:

  1. which released ChatGPT Desktop/Codex build first contains the fix;
  2. whether Chronicle workers are covered by that fix; and
  3. whether a guard will prevent background tasks configured with bundled Skills disabled from mutating $CODEX_HOME/skills/.system.

View original on GitHub ↗

3 Comments

nicsaintlo · 15 days ago

Independent confirmation on August 12, 2026.

Environment:

  • Codex App: 26.803.61601 (build 6396)
  • Bundled Codex CLI: 0.147.0-alpha.6.5
  • Platform: Darwin 25.5.0 arm64 arm

Reproduced deterministically:

  1. A normal Codex initialization restored six bundled system Skill files under $CODEX_HOME/skills/.system.
  2. Running the same bundled Codex executable in an ephemeral background-style codex exec with skills.bundled.enabled=false changed the system-Skills state from six files to the .system directory being missing.
  3. A subsequent normal initialization restored the six files.
  4. The Chronicle background worker was independently observed using the same skills.bundled.enabled=false setting while sharing the main CODEX_HOME.

This confirms the setting is mutating shared installation state rather than acting as process-local Skill visibility. It also explains why ordinary tasks can receive catalog paths such as $CODEX_HOME/skills/.system/openai-docs/SKILL.md and then fail because the advertised path has disappeared.

omarpinarecords · 15 days ago
Independent confirmation on August 12, 2026. Environment: Codex App: 26.803.61601 (build 6396) Bundled Codex CLI: 0.147.0-alpha.6.5 * Platform: Darwin 25.5.0 arm64 arm Reproduced deterministically: 1. A normal Codex initialization restored six bundled system Skill files under $CODEX_HOME/skills/.system. 2. Running the same bundled Codex executable in an ephemeral background-style codex exec with skills.bundled.enabled=false changed the system-Skills state from six files to the .system directory being missing. 3. A subsequent normal initialization restored the six files. 4. The Chronicle background worker was independently observed using the same skills.bundled.enabled=false setting while sharing the main CODEX_HOME. This confirms the setting is mutating shared installation state rather than acting as process-local Skill visibility. It also explains why ordinary tasks can receive catalog paths such as $CODEX_HOME/skills/.system/openai-docs/SKILL.md and then fail because the advertised path has disappeared.

If you have shared the issue via feeback add the id to th comment so they can prioritize the issue.

omarpinarecords · 11 days ago
Independent confirmation on August 12, 2026. Environment: Codex App: 26.803.61601 (build 6396) Bundled Codex CLI: 0.147.0-alpha.6.5 * Platform: Darwin 25.5.0 arm64 arm Reproduced deterministically: 1. A normal Codex initialization restored six bundled system Skill files under $CODEX_HOME/skills/.system. 2. Running the same bundled Codex executable in an ephemeral background-style codex exec with skills.bundled.enabled=false changed the system-Skills state from six files to the .system directory being missing. 3. A subsequent normal initialization restored the six files. 4. The Chronicle background worker was independently observed using the same skills.bundled.enabled=false setting while sharing the main CODEX_HOME. This confirms the setting is mutating shared installation state rather than acting as process-local Skill visibility. It also explains why ordinary tasks can receive catalog paths such as $CODEX_HOME/skills/.system/openai-docs/SKILL.md and then fail because the advertised path has disappeared.

Check this https://github.com/openai/codex/issues/19265#issuecomment-5310154058