Allow projects to disable or redirect the Codex Desktop automation tool

What variant of Codex are you using?

Codex Desktop App

What feature would you like to see?

Allow a trusted project to disable or redirect the Codex Desktop automation_update tool for sessions in that project.

Some projects have their own scheduling system. It may be implemented through project-specific tools, an MCP server, a CLI, repository files, or an established agent workflow. In those projects, requests such as:

• "Remind me about this tomorrow."
• "Schedule this task for next week."
• "Make this recur every Monday."

are supposed to use the project's scheduling system.

Codex Desktop also injects automation_update and gives the agent general instructions to use it for reminders and scheduled tasks. The agent therefore sees two legitimate scheduling surfaces for the same user language. It may choose the Desktop automation instead of the project-owned workflow, even when project instructions describe the intended approach.

This is confusing for both the agent and the user. A reminder can end up in a different system than the project's other scheduled work, with different persistence, recurrence, ownership, and review semantics. Behavior can also vary between agents depending on which instruction or tool description wins during routing.

Please add a project-scoped control, ideally in trusted .codex/config.toml, that can:

1. Disable a named Desktop-injected/dynamic tool such as automation_update.
2. Remove the disabled tool from both the model-visible tool manifest and tool dispatch, rather than rejecting it only after the agent selects it.
3. Suppress generic Desktop instructions that tell the agent to use a tool disabled by the project.
4. Optionally provide short replacement guidance, so the agent is directed toward the project's supported workflow instead of merely being told that scheduling is unavailable.

Illustrative configuration only:

[tools."codex_app.automation_update"]
enabled = false
replacement = "Follow this project's scheduling workflow."

The exact schema is less important than applying the restriction before the model receives its effective instructions and tool list.

This should be project-scoped rather than global: the same user may want native Codex scheduled tasks in most projects while using a domain-specific scheduler in one repository.

Additional information

Related issues:

• #33890 describes the equivalent problem for update_plan: an external planning system and the built-in planner create competing surfaces and make tool selection unpredictable. tools.update_plan.enabled was subsequently implemented in #35054.
• #6049 requests broader control over built-in tools.
• #18115 describes cross-project interference and the need for repository-scoped capability configuration.
• #36741 describes incorrect routing when overlapping bundled and user-selected capabilities are available.

This request is specifically about project-scoped control over Desktop-injected tools, using scheduling as the concrete case. Globally disabling scheduled tasks would be a nice-to-have.