VS code ide websearch tool non functioning.
Resolved 💬 2 comments Opened Sep 24, 2025 by Thomas2419 Closed Sep 27, 2025
What version of Codex is running?
Codex - OpenAI's coding agent Vscode IDE extension version: 0.4.14
Which model were you using?
gpt-5-codex
What platform is your computer?
Github Codespace: Linux 6.8.0-1030-azure x86_64 x86_64
What steps can reproduce the bug?
Codex Vscode IDE extension can't or doesn't use the webearch tool, while codex cli does use the websearch tool.
What is the expected behavior?
A websearch especially a visible output of the # of pages and the like.
What do you see instead?
The model thinking a lot using curl and wget and ultimately failing to realize it can't search or failing to realize it could use it.
Additional information
Apologies if this isn't the correct place for this, but openai documentation says the ide extension is built upon codex cli, and there's no way to give feedback or send bug report on the extension as far as i saw.
2 Comments
Check https://github.com/openai/codex/issues/3139
@bhack I believe both codex and I were being incorrect. I saw no logging, no references to the search in thinking as is seen in the CLI version, and when i asked it said it had not. However I further tested and it appeared it did in fact use the search tool given the consistency of the output compared to using the cli tool. Ie it seems to have referenced the same pages in the same seach to have outputted updated information that's recent and not in the training data I believe.