`codex exec` on Windows spawns a visible long-lived PowerShell helper window when launched headlessly

[gusholcomb]

Issue Draft: codex exec on Windows spawns visible PowerShell helper window

Title

codex exec on Windows spawns a visible long-lived PowerShell helper window when launched headlessly

Body

What is the problem?

We are running Codex from another tool in a headless/background mode using codex exec on Windows. The parent process launches Codex with windowsHide: true and avoids the npm .cmd shim by invoking the Codex JavaScript entrypoint through node.exe directly.

Despite that, a visible PowerShell window appears. One of these windows can remain open for the lifetime of the active Codex process.

The visible window appears to come from a PowerShell helper spawned by Codex itself, not from the parent application that launches Codex.

Why this matters

codex exec is documented and exposed as a non-interactive/headless mode. In background automation on Windows, it should not open visible terminal windows. This is especially disruptive for installed services, hooks, daemons, editors, or other tools that call Codex in the background.

Because this PowerShell process is a grandchild of the caller, the caller cannot reliably apply windowsHide to it. The process that spawns the helper needs to request hidden/no-window creation on Windows.

Environment

• OS: Windows
• Invocation mode: codex exec
• Parent application launch behavior:
  • Uses Node spawn
  • Uses windowsHide: true
  • Uses stdio: [ignore, pipe, pipe]
  • Avoids npm .cmd shim by resolving to the Codex JS entrypoint and invoking it with node.exe

Observed process tree

The long-lived visible PowerShell process was parented by codex.exe, not by the parent application:

powershell.exe
  CommandLine: C:\WINDOWS\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\powershell.exe -NoLogo -NoProfile -NonInteractive -EncodedCommand ...
  Parent: codex.exe

The decoded command describes the process as:

Long-lived PowerShell AST parser used by the Rust command-safety layer on Windows.

Expected behavior

When codex exec is used non-interactively on Windows, Codex should not create visible console windows for internal helper processes.

Possible fixes:

• Spawn the Windows PowerShell AST/helper process with hidden/no-window creation flags.
• Provide a mode for codex exec that does not start shell/tool command-safety helper processes when the caller only needs prompt-only non-interactive behavior.

Actual behavior

codex exec can spawn a visible PowerShell helper window. When Codex is launched by a background enrichment process, this makes background work visible to the desktop user and can leave a PowerShell window open.

Reproduction shape

1. On Windows, launch Codex from a Node process using spawn.
2. Set windowsHide: true.
3. Invoke codex exec non-interactively.
4. Observe that Codex may spawn a visible powershell.exe child for its Windows command-safety layer.

The key point is that the visible window is spawned by Codex itself, so hiding the original codex exec process from the parent application is not enough.

[github-actions]

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

• Windows: hide command-safety PowerShell parser process to avoid pwsh.exe console flashes #18984

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