Codex app intermittently ends a turn after commentary before executing planned tool calls #46153

Summary

The Codex desktop app sometimes ends an agent turn immediately after a commentary/progress message, before the agent performs the tool calls it explicitly said it would perform. No error or blocker is shown. The conversation simply becomes idle and waits for another user message such as "continue".

This has happened repeatedly across tool-using tasks. A recent minimal example involved asking the agent to create a new Git worktree workspace.

Steps to reproduce

1. In the Codex desktop app, ask the agent to perform a multi-step task that requires tools, for example: Create a new worktree workspace: risk_bugfix.
2. The agent sends a commentary/progress message similar to: I will first read the project rules and the worktree skill, then execute the preflight and create the workspace.
3. Observe that no tool call follows the commentary message.
4. The turn stops and the app waits for user input, even though the task is incomplete and no blocker was reported.
5. Send continue or why did it stop?.
6. The agent acknowledges the interruption and successfully resumes the exact planned tool workflow.

Expected behavior

After a non-final commentary/progress message, the agent should continue issuing the planned tool calls until one of these conditions is met:

• the requested task is completed;
• a concrete blocker requires user input; or
• the agent sends an explicit final response explaining why it cannot continue.

A commentary-only message should not be treated as a completed turn.

Actual behavior

The run terminates after a commentary-only message. There is no tool call, error, permission prompt, timeout, cancellation notice, or final explanation. The user must manually send another message to restart the work.

Frequency and impact

This is intermittent but recurrent. It is especially disruptive for longer agentic tasks because users cannot tell whether the agent is still working, failed silently, or forgot to continue. It also defeats the expectation that progress commentary is an intermediate update rather than a terminal response.

Additional observations

• The same task resumes normally after a short user nudge, suggesting the underlying tools and permissions are available.
• In the reproduced case, the agent had not yet invoked any tool when the turn stopped.
• No repository source code, secret, or sensitive data is required to reproduce the issue.
• This may be a control-flow or turn-finalization issue where a commentary-only assistant message is incorrectly accepted as the terminal output.

Environment

• Product: Codex desktop app for macOS
• App version: 26.908.40834
• Codex CLI installed: 0.154.0
• macOS: 26.3.1 (Build 25D771280a)
• Date observed: 2026-09-17