codex - 💡(How to fix) Fix Codex Skill Causes Frontend Startup to Hang and Memory Usage to Exceed 50GB on Mac

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

26.519.41501 (3044)

What subscription do you have?

After installing/enabling a Codex skill, whenever Codex uses that skill, my frontend project becomes extremely slow or completely hangs during startup. The issue happens when I run the frontend dev server, for example with npm run dev. Memory usage increases rapidly and can exceed 50 GB, eventually causing my Mac to freeze or become unresponsive. The same frontend project starts normally when the skill is not enabled or not used. It looks like the skill may be causing excessive memory consumption, possibly due to recursive file scanning, processing large directories such as node_modules, .next, dist, or build cache folders, or some other infinite/expensive operation.

What platform is your computer?

MacOS

What issue are you seeing?

After installing/enabling a Codex skill, whenever Codex uses that skill, my frontend project becomes extremely slow or completely hangs during startup.

The issue happens when I run the frontend dev server, for example with npm run dev. Memory usage increases rapidly and can exceed 50 GB, eventually causing my Mac to freeze or become unresponsive.

The same frontend project starts normally when the skill is not enabled or not used.

It looks like the skill may be causing excessive memory consumption, possibly due to recursive file scanning, processing large directories such as node_modules, .next, dist, or build cache folders, or some other infinite/expensive operation.

What steps can reproduce the bug?

1. Install or enable the skill in Codex.
2. Open a frontend project.
3. Ask Codex to use this skill, or trigger a task that depends on this skill.
4. Run the frontend project locally, for example with npm run dev.
5. Observe that the frontend dev server startup becomes extremely slow or hangs.
6. Check system memory usage in Activity Monitor.
7. Memory usage increases rapidly and can exceed 50 GB.
8. The Mac eventually freezes or becomes unresponsive.

This issue is reproducible every time the skill is used. The same frontend project starts normally when the skill is not enabled or not used.

What is the expected behavior?

No response

Additional information

No response