What version of the Codex App are you using (From “About Codex” dialog)?
26.429.61741
What subscription do you have?
Plus
What platform is your computer?
Microsoft Windows NT 10.0.26200.0 x64 / Powershell
What issue are you seeing?
The very first prompt I ever made in Codex project made irreversible decisions for me before I even had a chance to define them. Specifically, the project working folder was created as "C:\Users<username>\Documents\New Project".
I do not want an ambiguous/arbitrary/generic working folder for my project, so I asked Codex to change the workspace folder name, it refused.
Therefore I closed codex, renamed the workspace myself to "C:\Users<username>\Documents\ActualName", opened Codex and gave it the prompt to update the workspace name. This project has been a operational nightmare ever since.
While most session/memory/sql/file references were updated to "C:\Users<username>\Documents\ActualName" some still point at "C:\Users<username>\Documents\New Project" weeks after I made this change leading to inconsistent Codex behavior. While working in this project I ran into various problems because of this mismatch, but decided to address it once and for all when Codex considered a junk file in "C:\Users<username>\Documents\New Project" an official design document for my project.
When tasked with scrubbing/replacing this incongruent working directory reference, Codex repeatedly failed over and over in even identifying all the references to this old/bad name. It took several hours of back and forth to work through this, including a problem where Codex straight up deleted my chat history from the project: project chats do not show up in the UI anymore, I cannot resume or revisit any of my project chats, and I still do not have a solution to this.
What a terrible starting experience. I have since learned to be very specific with Codex when opening new projects, and added chat controls to avoid arbitrary irreversible decisions to Agents.MD, but this a FUNDAMENTAL FLAW in the design - a new/fresh install codex made an arbitrary irreversible decision leading to hours of frustration, workaround, and troubleshooting Codex issues instead of working on my project. The ultimate result of this was losing my entire chat history for the project, a change it made in an effort to scrub the bad working directory name without any prompt or approval from me. And because I lost my chat history I can't even paste in this bug what prompts led to this behavior.
This kind of fundamental design flaw forces me to rethink my decision to even use ChatGPT/Codex in the first place as there are many competitors in this space, and I'm not saying this to be dramatic but to lend gravity into just how serious "first prompt" problems are.
The cherry on top after spending the entire morning troubleshooting Codex issues instead of doing actual work:
Still have no chat history. This data is irreversibly lost from my perspective, because I access it through the Codex UI not through internal Codex objects and processes. Whatever you are doing is not working, try again
9:46 AM
You've hit your usage limit. Upgrade to Pro (https://chatgpt.com/explore/pro), visit https://chatgpt.com/codex/settings/usage to purchase more credits or try again at 12:08 PM.
An entire 5 hour token budget gone (not to mention weekly budget) just trying to force Codex to fix itself.
/cry
What steps can reproduce the bug?
Tell Codex something generic like "I'd like to begin a new project" and watch it make arbitrary irreversible decisions for you without prompting or approval.
What is the expected behavior?
Codex understands the ask is abstract/high-level and prompts the user for further information to avoid making arbitrary and irreversible decisions.
Additional information
No response
What version of the Codex App are you using (From “About Codex” dialog)?
26.429.61741
What subscription do you have?
Plus
What platform is your computer?
Microsoft Windows NT 10.0.26200.0 x64 / Powershell
What issue are you seeing?
The very first prompt I ever made in Codex project made irreversible decisions for me before I even had a chance to define them. Specifically, the project working folder was created as "C:\Users<username>\Documents\New Project".
I do not want an ambiguous/arbitrary/generic working folder for my project, so I asked Codex to change the workspace folder name, it refused.
Therefore I closed codex, renamed the workspace myself to "C:\Users<username>\Documents\ActualName", opened Codex and gave it the prompt to update the workspace name. This project has been a operational nightmare ever since.
While most session/memory/sql/file references were updated to "C:\Users<username>\Documents\ActualName" some still point at "C:\Users<username>\Documents\New Project" weeks after I made this change leading to inconsistent Codex behavior. While working in this project I ran into various problems because of this mismatch, but decided to address it once and for all when Codex considered a junk file in "C:\Users<username>\Documents\New Project" an official design document for my project.
When tasked with scrubbing/replacing this incongruent working directory reference, Codex repeatedly failed over and over in even identifying all the references to this old/bad name. It took several hours of back and forth to work through this, including a problem where Codex straight up deleted my chat history from the project: project chats do not show up in the UI anymore, I cannot resume or revisit any of my project chats, and I still do not have a solution to this.
What a terrible starting experience. I have since learned to be very specific with Codex when opening new projects, and added chat controls to avoid arbitrary irreversible decisions to Agents.MD, but this a FUNDAMENTAL FLAW in the design - a new/fresh install codex made an arbitrary irreversible decision leading to hours of frustration, workaround, and troubleshooting Codex issues instead of working on my project. The ultimate result of this was losing my entire chat history for the project, a change it made in an effort to scrub the bad working directory name without any prompt or approval from me. And because I lost my chat history I can't even paste in this bug what prompts led to this behavior.
This kind of fundamental design flaw forces me to rethink my decision to even use ChatGPT/Codex in the first place as there are many competitors in this space, and I'm not saying this to be dramatic but to lend gravity into just how serious "first prompt" problems are.
The cherry on top after spending the entire morning troubleshooting Codex issues instead of doing actual work:
An entire 5 hour token budget gone (not to mention weekly budget) just trying to force Codex to fix itself.
/cry
What steps can reproduce the bug?
Tell Codex something generic like "I'd like to begin a new project" and watch it make arbitrary irreversible decisions for you without prompting or approval.
What is the expected behavior?
Codex understands the ask is abstract/high-level and prompts the user for further information to avoid making arbitrary and irreversible decisions.
Additional information
No response