0.144.0-alpha.4: ChatGPT Desktop bundled Codex CLI fails to locate codex-code-mode-host after migration from Codex.app #32495

What version of Codex CLI is running?

codex-cli 0.144.0-alpha.4

What subscription do you have?

ChatGPT Pro

Which model were you using?

GPT-5.5

What platform is your computer?

macOS 26.5.1 (Apple Silicon)

What terminal emulator and version are you using (if applicable)?

Apple Terminal (macOS)

Codex doctor report

Installed:
codex-cli 0.144.0-alpha.4

Latest:
0.144.1

State DB integrity: OK
Logs DB integrity: OK

Reachability:
ChatGPT base URL connect failed

WebSocket:
Connected successfully

What issue are you seeing?

After migrating from the old Codex Desktop app to the new ChatGPT Desktop app, the original ~/.local/bin/codex symlink still pointed to the removed Codex.app.

After updating the symlink to point to the bundled CLI inside ChatGPT.app, Codex started successfully, but every tool invocation failed because it attempted to launch:
~/.local/bin/codex-code-mode-host
resulting in:
failed to spawn code-mode host No such file or directory

What steps can reproduce the bug?

1. Install the old Codex Desktop app.

2. Upgrade/migrate to the new ChatGPT Desktop app.

3. The original ~/.local/bin/codex symlink still points to:

   /Applications/Codex.app/...

4. Update the symlink to:

   /Applications/ChatGPT.app/Contents/Resources/codex

5. Launch codex.

6. Execute any command requiring terminal tools (for example: pwd, ls, git status).

What is the expected behavior?

Codex should locate and launch the bundled
codex-code-mode-host inside:

/Applications/ChatGPT.app/Contents/Resources/

without requiring manual changes after migration.

Additional information

This system was upgraded from the old standalone Codex Desktop application to the new ChatGPT Desktop application. It was not a clean installation.

The helper binary was not actually missing.

It existed here:
/Applications/ChatGPT.app/Contents/Resources/codex-code-mode-host
As an experiment, I replaced the ~/.local/bin/codex symlink with a small launcher script:
#!/bin/sh exec /Applications/ChatGPT.app/Contents/Resources/codex "$@"

After doing so, Codex successfully launched codex-code-mode-host.
I then ran a read-only smoke test including:

• pwd
• ls
• echo
• find
• rg
• git

All commands executed successfully and no further codex-code-mode-host errors occurred.

This workaround suggests the issue may be related to how the bundled CLI resolves the helper executable after migration, although I cannot confirm the underlying implementation.