Pull request 37057 just landed in Codex version
0.146.1, and, uh, it is not your standard routine patch.
Huge shoutout to Jellypod for keeping this daily show going,
by the way, but we have to drop straight into this backport.
OpenAI had to roll out safer automatic review defaults specifically for cyber
capable models.
Wait, cyber capable models?
Meaning the models that can actually write scripts, inspect networks,
and make system calls on their own?
Exactly.
The ones that go beyond basic autocomplete and start acting like autonomous terminal
operators.
Before this release, if you had automatic review turned on,
a model with elevated capabilities could, um, potentially trigger high risk tool
executions without explicitly pausing for a human to hit approve.
That is a terrifying thought.
So if I am letting an agent refactor code, and it suddenly decides it needs to
modify a system binary or run a network probe, the auto review engine might have
just swept that under the rug because it fit the general pattern of what it was
allowed to do?
Right!
The old default auto review rules were, uh, frankly a little too forgiving.
They treated standard code edits and potentially dangerous cyber operations with
almost the same level of trust once auto review was flagged active.
What version 0.146.1 does is backport a much stricter baseline.
If a cyber capable model requests a tool call that hits a sensitive system boundary,
the engine forces a hard pause.
So it re balances that fundamental security tension, right?
You want the speed of autonomous agent coding, but you cannot afford silent
privilege escalation.
You cannot have the model giving itself root or running arbitrary shell scripts just
to solve a build error.
Precisely.
And in practice, when you are running the command line interface,
if the model requests elevated privileges now, you will see an explicit halt.
It will not just execute in the background.
If developers want to inspect or adjust how these security rules apply locally,
they can look right inside their local dot codex slash config dot toml file.
And editing that dot codex slash config dot toml file won't totally break local
execution for safe, normal tasks?
No, not at all.
It just gives you granular control over the security policy thresholds,
so you can see exactly which tool calls trigger a mandatory prompt versus which ones
pass through under automatic review.
Okay, that makes total sense.
So it locks down the dangerous cyber capability edge cases without slowing down your
day to day local git commits or basic file edits.
But wait, when that hard pause actually happens in the middle of a terminal session,
how does the developer know why it stopped?
Because in older builds, permissions would change and you were just left guessing
whether the model hung or if a security wall went up.
That is the second big piece of 0.146.1!
They overhauled the terminal interface feedback.
Now, the CLI explicitly renders on screen notices that explain permission changes
directly in the terminal interface.
So if your session switches modes or an escalated tool request gets flagged,
Codex actually prints a clear explanation of why the permission boundary shifted.
Wow, actual plain English explanations right in the terminal instead of a cryptic
error code or a silent freeze.
I, I, I really love that.
It is huge for transparency.
And there is a really subtle workflow fix in this release that I think a lot of
enterprise developers are going to appreciate.
In previous builds, whenever one of these automatic review security checks
triggered, it had a bad habit of resetting your local proxy parameters.
Wait, seriously?
So if you were behind a corporate proxy, a security check would wipe your proxy
settings mid session?
Yes!
It would drop the proxy config, and then every subsequent network call from the
model would just fail flat.
In 0.146.1, they fixed that sequence so proxy settings are fully preserved
across all automatic review checks.
That must have been driving enterprise security teams absolutely bonkers.
You pass a security check, and then your network connection immediately breaks
because the proxy settings disappeared!
Exactly.
Plus, they cleaned up non blocking approval prompts and improved the fallback
handling during terminal installation, so if your shell environment has weird path
quirks, it degrades gracefully instead of crashing out.
So if an engineering team wants to roll this out today, what are the immediate
steps?
Upgrade to version 0.146.1 right away, inspect your dot codex slash
config dot toml file to confirm your auto review defaults match your team policies,
and keep an eye on those terminal permission notices during your next build run.
Sounds like a solid update.
Good chatting, Ethan!
Catch you next time!