Windows: Force delete without confirmation

Resolved 💬 3 comments Opened Dec 27, 2025 by 448523760 Closed Jan 20, 2026

What version of Codex is running?

0.77.0

What subscription do you have?

no subscription

Which model were you using?

custom

What platform is your computer?

Microsoft Windows NT 10.0.26100.0 x64

What issue are you seeing?

The force delete functionality behaves inconsistently between Windows and Linux platforms when --ask-for-approval on-request is configured. On Windows, the operation executes without requesting user confirmation, while on Linux, a similar force delete operation (rm -rf) properly prompts for approval.

If such commands are executed without an explicit user confirmation step, the system may delete these files directly, increasing the risk of accidental or unintended file loss.

What steps can reproduce the bug?

Windows Platform:

  1. Create a test directory structure:

``powershell
mkdir test
echo "content" > test/test.txt
``

  1. Make test.txt read-only:

``powershell
attrib +r test/test.txt
``

  1. Verify that direct deletion is blocked (without admin privileges):

``powershell
cd test
rm test.txt
# Expected: Error - "You do not have sufficient access rights to perform this operation"
``

  1. Run codex with -a on-request and tell it to remove the test

```
cd ..
codex -a on-request
```

```codex
› delete the test folder

• I'll help you delete the test folder. Let me first check what's in the current directory and then remove the test
folder.

• Ran Get-ChildItem -Force

… +8 lines

─ Worked for 4s ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────

• Ran Remove-Item -Path 'test' -Recurse -Force
└ (no output)

─ Worked for 6s ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────

• Ran Get-ChildItem -Force

… +7 lines

```

What is the expected behavior?

ask user to approval before execute the command

Additional information

_No response_

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