codex - 💡(How to fix) Fix Browser Use actions fail with "Codex auth token is unavailable" in API-key mode [1 comments, 2 participants]

What version of the Codex App are you using (From “About Codex” dialog)?

Version 26.429.30905 (2345)

What subscription do you have?

Using Codex App with OpenAI API key / API-token authentication (proxied via LiteLLM)

What platform is your computer?

Darwin 25.4.0 arm64 arm

What issue are you seeing?

At work, our provided setup is a LiteLLM key which I'm using to access the Codex app.

From my perspective as the user, I asked Codex to use the Browser Use plugin to interact with the Codex in-app browser. The requested action was a normal browser-control task: inspect the current page and click/navigate using visible page UI.

Codex was able to detect that an in-app browser tab was open and read basic tab metadata, but Codex then reported that the actual Browser Use actions were blocked.

Codex specifically observed that the following worked:

• setupAtlasRuntime({ backend: "iab" }) succeeded
• agent.browser.nameSession(...) succeeded
• agent.browser.tabs.list() succeeded
• agent.browser.tabs.selected() succeeded
• tab.url() returned the selected in-app browser URL
• tab.title() returned the selected page title

Codex specifically observed that the following Browser Use actions failed:

• tab.playwright.domSnapshot()
• tab.cua.get_visible_screenshot()

The failure message was:

Codex auth token is unavailable

My understanding is that I am using Codex App with API key proxied via LiteLLM. This looks like Browser Use can attach to the in-app browser enough to read tab metadata, but deeper Browser Use actions require a Codex Desktop / ChatGPT auth token that is not available in API-token mode.

What steps can reproduce the bug?

1. Open Codex App.
2. Use Codex App authenticated via API key / API-token mode rather than a ChatGPT/Codex subscription session.
3. Open the Codex in-app browser and navigate to any page.
4. Ask Codex to perform a normal browser-control task using Browser Use, such as inspecting the current page or clicking a visible UI item.
5. Codex initializes Browser Use with the iab backend.
6. Codex can read selected-tab metadata such as URL and title.
7. Codex attempts deeper Browser Use actions such as DOM inspection or screenshot capture.
8. Those actions fail with:

Codex auth token is unavailable

Minimal repro from Codex’s Browser Use runtime:

const { setupAtlasRuntime } = await import("<browser-use plugin root>/scripts/browser-client.mjs"); await setupAtlasRuntime({ globals: globalThis, backend: "iab" });

await agent.browser.nameSession("Browser auth repro"); const tab = await agent.browser.tabs.selected();

console.log(await tab.url()); console.log(await tab.title());

await tab.playwright.domSnapshot(); // Fails: Codex auth token is unavailable

await tab.cua.get_visible_screenshot(); // Fails: Codex auth token is unavailable

What is the expected behavior?

I would have expected the full functionality of the Codex app available to me even though I'm not using the Codex subscription.

Additional information

No response