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Codex credits consumed ~38,000–39,000 overnight with zero tasks issued — recurring bug, cap not enforced, no warning given #38294

Description

@chang-kr

What happened:

This has occurred twice, with nearly identical credit figures despite different credit caps each time.

Incident 1 (last Thursday afternoon KST)

Monthly credit cap: 5,000
Was actively working in the afternoon when Codex suddenly returned a "limit exceeded" error — with no prior low-credit warning
Usage showed 38,140 credits consumed — over 7x the cap
I did not receive any warning that credits were running low before being cut off

Incident 2 (last night overnight KST)

Monthly credit cap: 10,000 (raised by org after Incident 1)
Last task completed at 01:02 KST, Codex last responded at 01:03 KST
I went to sleep immediately after — zero tasks or commands issued after 01:03 KST
Woke up at 10:14 KST to: "You have reached the usage limit. Please contact your workspace owner for more access."
39,078 credits consumed in a ~9 hour window while I was asleep and issued zero tasks

Why I believe this is a bug:

Both incidents produced nearly identical totals (~38,000–39,000) even though caps were different (5,000 vs 10,000). Real usage cannot produce identical figures across different caps.
Hard cap was exceeded by 7x (Incident 1) and 4x (Incident 2) — cap is clearly not being enforced.
Incident 2 consumption occurred entirely while I was asleep with zero tasks, confirmed by timestamps.
No low-credit warning was given before cutoff in either incident.
/usage is blocked due to "no credits remaining" — making self-diagnosis impossible even as a read-only query.

Environment:

Client: VS Code Codex extension
Timezone: KST (UTC+9)
Subscription: Organization workspace (org-assigned credit limit)

Expected behavior:

Credit consumption should not occur without user-initiated tasks
Hard cap should be enforced and not exceeded
Low-credit warning should be issued before cutoff
/usage should not be blocked when trying to diagnose a billing issue

Additional context:

This appears to be affecting multiple accounts within our organization. An internal company-wide notice has been issued regarding abnormal Codex credit consumption. A support ticket has already been filed (case on file with OpenAI Support).

Similar issues reported by others:

#26306 — abnormal quota consumption after reset
community.openai.com: "Codex credits are draining while idle"

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    bugSomething isn't workingextensionIssues related to the VS Code extensionrate-limitsIssues related to rate limits, quotas, and token usage reporting

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