Codex refuses implementation of large requests, citing non-existent "session time limitations"
What version of Codex is running?
codex-cli 0.39.0
Which model were you using?
got-5-codex high
What platform is your computer?
Darwin 24.6.0 arm64 arm
What steps can reproduce the bug?
After the recent update, I have had issues where Codex believes it is in a different environment ("session time-limited, sandboxed") and will refuse to implement large refactors. It will refuse multiple times until finally relenting, and when questioned it told me that it got "confused about what environment it was in" and "is used to an environment that has more limits". There seems to be some issue with the agent's awareness of its environment with the newest update.
Additionally, it has refused to initiate training runs of models because it doesn't believe it has "enough time in the session for a long training run". This has made things very difficult to continue development when I have to re-explain to Codex that it is running tests on my hardware and that we have no session time limit. I believe that there is a testing environment that Codex has somehow learned habits from and carried over into prod.
What is the expected behavior?
Agent should implement code and not refuse based on non-existent "session time limits".
What do you see instead?
Codex refuses to implement large refactors or feature additions, citing sandbox issues that do not align with the actual development environment.
Additional information
_No response_
4 Comments
It's strange, won't you wait infinitely when training the model? You should know that it has no interactive terminal. Even using time control will get stuck. Currently, I use Claude's desktop commander to solve this shortcoming.
It may be from #3874, I'll revert to 0.38.0 for now and see if that helps.
Edit: Going back to 0.38.0 fixes the issue, seems to be from the recent update.
I have encountered the problem you mentioned before. It is not related to the version, but seems to be related to your prompt word. I have encountered this problem from time to time with the same version before, and I refused to try it directly. I have not encountered it again with 0.39.
As of upgrading to 0.42.0 I no longer have this issue (currently using gpt-5-codex high).