Severe Performance Degradation and Excessive Token Consumption in Codex 5.5 (VS Code Extension)

[AlchemyKoushik]

What version of the IDE extension are you using?

Codex VS Code Extension (Version: 5.5)

What subscription do you have?

Tested on both Plus and Go subscriptions (issue reproducible on both)

Which IDE are you using?

VS Code

What platform is your computer?

Microsoft Windows NT 10.0.26100.0 x64

What issue are you seeing?

After updating to Codex 5.5 in the VS Code extension, multiple major regressions appeared:

1. Performance Issues

• Significant lag in response generation
• Slower execution even for simple prompts
• VS Code becomes less responsive during Codex operations

2. Extremely High Token Consumption

• Tokens are exhausted within 3–4 hours of normal usage
• Previously, even 8–10 hours of heavy usage did not exhaust limits
• Consumption rate feels disproportionately high relative to task complexity

3. Degraded Output Quality

• Lower accuracy and reliability
• More retries required
• Increased need for manual correction

4. Cross-Account Reproducibility

• Same issue observed on two separate accounts (Plus + Go)
• Indicates issue is not account-specific

What steps can reproduce the bug?

1. Open VS Code with Codex extension (v5.5)
2. Start working on a normal coding workflow (moderate tasks)
3. Continue usage for a few hours
4. Observe:

• Gradual lag increase
• Rapid token depletion
• Decline in response quality

What is the expected behavior?

1. Smooth and responsive performance
2. Token consumption proportional to workload (similar to pre-5.5 behavior)
3. Stable output quality
4. No major variance across accounts

Additional information

• Issue started immediately after Codex 5.5 release
• Not project-specific (occurs across different workflows)
• Internet and system performance are stable

[github-actions]

Potential duplicates detected. Please review them and close your issue if it is a duplicate.

• Unexpected background task spawning and severe usage drain in VS Code Codex extension #18358
• Unexpected Usage Draining #18348
• Usage limits are exhausted too quickly in the IDE extension #18422
• Regression: Token usage significantly increased in v0.121.0 vs v0.116.0 for identical prompt and unchanged workspace #18345

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[GGBondBlueWhale]

Same here

[nv-ms]

Same here. Really bad. Extracting text from a 2 paged pdf document took up 20% of my 5 hour limit.