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Codex App of Windows: Custom "Never ask" mode breaks Chrome origin approval flow and incorrectly persists new sites as denied #22019

@hetinghong

Description

@hetinghong

What version of the Codex App are you using (From “About Codex” dialog)?

26.506.31421

What subscription do you have?

plus

What platform is your computer?

Microsoft Windows NT 10.0.26200.0 x64

What issue are you seeing?

When Codex is running in a custom mode configured to never ask for permission, @Chrome fails to surface the browser-origin access prompt for a new website. Instead of pausing for approval, the Chrome/Browser Use flow treats the result as a non-accept response, interprets it as if the user explicitly denied access, and persists the site into the thread-level denied list. After that, all later attempts to access the same origin in the same thread are rejected immediately without prompting again.

What steps can reproduce the bug?

  1. Enable a custom mode configured to never ask for permissions.
  2. Start a new Codex thread.
  3. Run @Chrome open https://example.com with a domain that has not been accessed in that thread before.
  4. Observe that no browser-origin approval prompt is shown.
  5. Retry the same command in the same thread.
  6. Observe that access is immediately rejected as if the user had denied it.

Evidence
A thread session file is created/updated under the browser sessions directory and the origin is persisted in denied, for example:

xxxxxx.toml
[origins]
denied = ["https://example.com"]

What is the expected behavior?

When @Chrome accesses a new origin, Codex should either:

  • show a browser access approval prompt, or
  • if prompts are suppressed by mode, avoid converting the lack of prompt into a persisted user denial.
    A site should only be written to denied if the user explicitly rejects access.

Additional information

Root cause hypothesis
The custom “never ask” mode appears to suppress or short-circuit the frontend approval UI for access_browser_origin, and the backend/plugin interprets the missing approval as a denial instead of as “no explicit user decision.”

One-line version
Custom mode breaks Chrome origin approval flow: the browser access prompt is not surfaced or not returned as accept, so Browser Use persists the origin as denied in the thread session state.

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    appIssues related to the Codex desktop appbrowserbugSomething isn't workingsafety-checkIssues related to safety and abuse checkswindows-osIssues related to Codex on Windows systems

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