codex - 💡(How to fix) Fix Automations/heartbeats appear to use different filesystem permissions than normal chats [1 comments, 2 participants]

Summary

A command that succeeds in a normal Codex chat can fail when run from an automation/heartbeat because the automation appears to use a narrower filesystem sandbox or different writable roots than the parent chat. In the same thread, the normal chat could create/chmod user-level application and log directories, while the heartbeat could not.

This makes automation-based monitoring unreliable for workflows that depend on local helpers maintaining auth/proxy/log state under the user's home directory.

Minimal reproduction

In a normal Codex chat, run:

python3 - <<'PY'
from pathlib import Path

paths = [
    Path.home() / "Library/Application Support/CodexPermissionRepro",
    Path.home() / "Library/Logs/CodexPermissionRepro",
]

for p in paths:
    p.mkdir(parents=True, exist_ok=True)
    p.chmod(0o700)
    print("ok", p)
PY

Observed in normal chat: both mkdir and chmod succeed.

Then create a heartbeat/automation attached to the same thread whose prompt asks Codex to run the same snippet and report stdout%2