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So you open a terminal, run codex, and
everything feels a little off.

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Slower, maybe.

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Your other session's worktrees aren't
showing up.

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Turns out you weren't attached to your
shared background daemon at all.

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Codex quietly dropped you into embedded
mode, and nobody told you.

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That's the behavior a change on main this
week is aimed at.

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And thanks to Jellypod to help make this
daily show a reality.

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I'm Maya, this is The Codex Changelog, and
a quick orientation first.

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Stable is still 0.163.0.

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Everything we're covering today landed on
main and shows up in the 0.164.0 alpha

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builds, alpha.6 and alpha.7, released
October 19 and 20.

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So if you're on stable, you won't see this
yet.

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It follows the daemon lifecycle work we
talked about last time,

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including the slash daemon restart command
that shipped in 0.163.0.

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The change is PR 55442 from etraut-openai,
commit

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8196bcd.

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Three pieces.

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First, the fixed allowlist for boolean
feature overrides in the daemon is gone.

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Any boolean flag under the features table
in config.toml, or passed on the command

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line, can now be sent to the daemon and
evaluated there.

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Second, on startup Codex now explicitly
compares the feature overrides your CLI is

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asking for against what the running daemon
reports as active.

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Third, if those don't match, Codex stops
and shows an interactive recovery dialog

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instead of silently falling back.

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Let me spell out why the silent fallback
hurt.

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According to the change notes, embedded
mode duplicates memory usage,

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causes SQLite database lock contention,
and isolates your session from the shared

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background worktrees and the coordinated
OAuth token refreshes.

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And the old allowlist meant you couldn't
really test an experimental flag through a

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daemon session anyway.

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So you'd set a flag, the daemon didn't
know about it, and you ended up in the slow

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lane without any indication.

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Here's what the dialog looks like.

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It lists up to three mismatched features
by name, and if more differ,

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it shows a remaining count.

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It tells you whether the running daemon is
managed.

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Then three choices.

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One, restart the managed daemon with your
current settings.

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That's marked Recommended when the daemon
is managed.

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Two, continue without the daemon in
embedded mode.

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Three, cancel startup.

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A couple of details I like.

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Saved daemon settings are preserved during
automatic startup,

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so Codex isn't clobbering your stored
configuration just to start.

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And the restart payload only submits the
delta, meaning just the features that

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actually mismatch, not your whole config.

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To use it, set your overrides in the
config file.

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In ~/.codex/config.toml, under the
features table, put

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multi_agent_v2 equals true, and

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preserve_fork_prefix equals true.

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Or use the feature override flag on the
command line with multi_agent_v2 equals

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true.

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Now if a background daemon is already
running with different settings,

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you get the prompt.

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Pick option one, the managed daemon
restarts with the new settings,

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and your session reconnects automatically.

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You can also trigger that yourself from
inside the TUI with slash daemon restart.

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Now the caveat, and it's a real one.

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Restarting a managed daemon terminates
active background subagents and turns across

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every terminal session attached to that
shared daemon.

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Codex warns you if active work will be
interrupted.

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But if you've got three terminals open and
one is halfway through a long task,

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read that warning before you press Enter
on the recommended option.

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And choosing embedded mode is fine when
you want it, but that terminal is then cut

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off from the shared daemon's cache,
worktrees, and token rotation.

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One more thing on the cleanup side.

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Removed features are now ignored
gracefully rather than failing validation,

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and features the daemon doesn't report
default to disabled.

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The example is features.transcript_v2,
retired in PR 55388.

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It's gone.

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If you want a fullscreen transcript, set
fullscreen_transcript equals true under the

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tui table instead.

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Now some smaller items from October 19 and
20.

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Async questions the agent asks you, the
ones with item type question,

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now render through the TUI Markdown
engine.

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That's PR 55411.

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Fenced code blocks, emphasis, and labeled
URLs display properly,

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and overwide tokens wrap without
everything turning bold.

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The dollar sign file and context picker,
PR 55596, now ranks by

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how often you pick things, within the
exact, prefix, and fuzzy match tiers.

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It tracks up to 50 confirmed selections in

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~/.codex/mention_usage.json.

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So that's a local file you can inspect, or
delete if you want a fresh ranking.

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There's also a resilience fix in PR 55409.

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If a remote server refuses thread start
because it's shutting down or draining,

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Codex now catches that refusal, waits for
the draining connection to close,

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reconnects within a two minute deadline,
and retries startup once.

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Your prompt draft, model selection, and
reasoning effort are preserved.

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On the security side, PR 55384 hardens the
Linux launcher that runs before the

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sandbox.

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It verifies that lookup paths, parent
directory aliases, and the canonical targets

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for executables like bwrap can't be
swapped out through writable symlinks or sticky

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directory overrides.

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Two for API users.

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PR 55587 decouples prompt cache keys.

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With StartThreadOptions, you can set
PromptCacheKey to inherit the session key,

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supply your own, or omit prompt_cache_key
entirely.

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That lets threads share a cache without
you rewriting session IDs.

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And PR 55407 clarifies login status.

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Entering an API key reports API key saved
and API key configured,

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and it states that authentication is
verified on your first request,

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not when you type it in.

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So the takeaway.

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If you're running the alpha, check your
features table against your running daemon

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before you start a long session, and look
at the mismatch prompt instead of

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dismissing it.

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If you're on stable 0.163.0, you can use
slash daemon restart today and wait for

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this to land.

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That's the changelog for today.