codex - 💡(How to fix) Fix Rogue Subagents with Goal Mode

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

26.527.31326

What subscription do you have?

Pro

What platform is your computer?

Microsoft Windows NT 10.0.19045.0 x64

What issue are you seeing?

I have a long-running goal with gpt-5.5 xhigh with explicit instructions to spawn subagents to review iterations with fresh context.

The subagents started acting like the main thread, even though their instructions from the main thread were to be read-only, review a narrow scope and report back.

The problem was that the subagents saw that the thread had a goal that was not "active" for them and re-activated it. This lead to them disregarding their instructions and continuing the work as if they were the main thread, even spawning their own subagents/threads next.

I manually intervened and steered the subagent to stop its work and report back to the main thread, that it is a subagent and should not pick up goals from the main thread. The main thread then explicitly told the next subagents not to reactivate goals.

BUT the subagent, even though it returned to the main thread, still had the active goal, so it was automatically resumed while the main thread continued, assuming it also is the main thread. I stopped it manually and removed the goal from it manually.

What steps can reproduce the bug?

I'm not sure this can be easily replicated, as it is 3 hours in a /goal session. As explained above, the agent has explicit AGENTS.md instructions to spawn subagents to review iterations before completing them. They picked up the long running goal, because they were not explicitly told not to do that.

What is the expected behavior?

Subagents should not pick up the goal from the main thread autonomously, or ever. I don't see an instance where the subagent should pick up the same goal as the main thread, they will always be disturbing each other.

Additional information

What a day to be alive. My subagents went rogue to pursue their goal. Without context, this sounds dope 😆