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[ChatGPT Chronicle] System Skill Creator is deleted from shared system Skills #37783

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[ChatGPT Chronicle] System Skill Creator is deleted from shared system Skills#37783
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appIssues related to the Codex desktop appautomationsbugSomething isn't workingskillsIssues related to skills

Description

@omarpinarecords
omarpinarecords
opened on Aug 10, 2026

Summary

A ChatGPT Chronicle/background run deletes the canonical system Skill Creator from the shared Codex system-Skills installation.

The Chronicle worker starts the bundled Codex runtime with skills.bundled.enabled=false. The resulting cleanup appears to remove the shared $CODEX_HOME/skills/.system directory instead of merely disabling bundled Skills for that worker. The system Skill Creator then becomes unavailable to unrelated, ordinary Codex tasks.

This report concerns the canonical OpenAI-provided system Skill Creator—not a personal or copied substitute.

This have been like that since codex app released months ago, this is unacceptable.

Affected environment

  • ChatGPT Desktop: 26.803.41515 (build 6321)
  • Bundled Codex CLI: 0.147.0-alpha.6.5
  • macOS: 26.6.1, Apple silicon

Reproduction

  1. Start ChatGPT Desktop and confirm the canonical system Skill Creator is present under $CODEX_HOME/skills/.system/skill-creator.
  2. Enable Chronicle and allow a Chronicle background task to start.
  3. Observe that the Chronicle worker invokes the bundled Codex runtime with skills.bundled.enabled=false.
  4. Inspect the shared system-Skills installation after the worker starts.
  5. Start an unrelated Codex task and attempt to use the system Skill Creator.

Actual result

  • $CODEX_HOME/skills/.system is removed.
  • The canonical system Skill Creator disappears and cannot be discovered by later ordinary tasks.
  • The system OpenAI Docs Skill disappears in the same event, confirming that this is a shared system-directory mutation rather than a failure isolated to one Skill.
  • A fresh normal Codex startup can restore the bundled system Skills, but a later Chronicle run removes them again.
  • Turning Chronicle off prevents recurrence only after any already-running Chronicle worker exits.

The deletion is also reproducible with a disposable CODEX_HOME, without user cleanup scripts or scheduled automations.

Expected result

skills.bundled.enabled=false should control availability only for that worker. It must not delete, overwrite, or mutate the shared canonical system-Skills installation.

In particular, a Chronicle task must never uninstall the system Skill Creator used by other tasks.

Related upstream work

This may share the cleanup defect reported in #19265 and addressed by #36989, but the currently distributed ChatGPT Desktop build above still reproduces the Chronicle-specific Skill Creator failure.

Please confirm:

  1. which released ChatGPT Desktop/Codex build first contains the fix;
  2. whether Chronicle workers are covered by that fix; and
  3. whether a guard will prevent background tasks configured with bundled Skills disabled from mutating $CODEX_HOME/skills/.system.

Activity

  1. github-actions
    added
    bugSomething isn't working
    appIssues related to the Codex desktop app
    skillsIssues related to skills
    automations
    on Aug 10, 2026
  2. omarpinarecords
    changed the title [-]ChatGPT Chronicle removes bundled system Skills, including OpenAI Docs[/-] [+][ChatGPT Chronicle] System Skill Creator is deleted from shared system Skills[/+] on Aug 10, 2026

  3. nicsaintlo commented on Aug 12, 2026

    @nicsaintlo
    nicsaintlo
    on Aug 12, 2026 – with ChatGPT Codex Connector

    Independent confirmation on August 12, 2026.

    Environment:

    • Codex App: 26.803.61601 (build 6396)
    • Bundled Codex CLI: 0.147.0-alpha.6.5
    • Platform: Darwin 25.5.0 arm64 arm

    Reproduced deterministically:

    1. A normal Codex initialization restored six bundled system Skill files under $CODEX_HOME/skills/.system.
    2. Running the same bundled Codex executable in an ephemeral background-style codex exec with skills.bundled.enabled=false changed the system-Skills state from six files to the .system directory being missing.
    3. A subsequent normal initialization restored the six files.
    4. The Chronicle background worker was independently observed using the same skills.bundled.enabled=false setting while sharing the main CODEX_HOME.

    This confirms the setting is mutating shared installation state rather than acting as process-local Skill visibility. It also explains why ordinary tasks can receive catalog paths such as $CODEX_HOME/skills/.system/openai-docs/SKILL.md and then fail because the advertised path has disappeared.

  4. omarpinarecords commented on Aug 12, 2026

    @omarpinarecords
    omarpinarecords
    on Aug 12, 2026
    Author

    Independent confirmation on August 12, 2026.

    Environment:

    • Codex App: 26.803.61601 (build 6396)
    • Bundled Codex CLI: 0.147.0-alpha.6.5
    • Platform: Darwin 25.5.0 arm64 arm

    Reproduced deterministically:

    1. A normal Codex initialization restored six bundled system Skill files under $CODEX_HOME/skills/.system.
    2. Running the same bundled Codex executable in an ephemeral background-style codex exec with skills.bundled.enabled=false changed the system-Skills state from six files to the .system directory being missing.
    3. A subsequent normal initialization restored the six files.
    4. The Chronicle background worker was independently observed using the same skills.bundled.enabled=false setting while sharing the main CODEX_HOME.

    This confirms the setting is mutating shared installation state rather than acting as process-local Skill visibility. It also explains why ordinary tasks can receive catalog paths such as $CODEX_HOME/skills/.system/openai-docs/SKILL.md and then fail because the advertised path has disappeared.

    If you have shared the issue via feeback add the id to th comment so they can prioritize the issue.

  5. omarpinarecords commented on Aug 17, 2026

    @omarpinarecords
    omarpinarecords
    on Aug 17, 2026
    Author

    Independent confirmation on August 12, 2026.

    Environment:

    • Codex App: 26.803.61601 (build 6396)
    • Bundled Codex CLI: 0.147.0-alpha.6.5
    • Platform: Darwin 25.5.0 arm64 arm

    Reproduced deterministically:

    1. A normal Codex initialization restored six bundled system Skill files under $CODEX_HOME/skills/.system.
    2. Running the same bundled Codex executable in an ephemeral background-style codex exec with skills.bundled.enabled=false changed the system-Skills state from six files to the .system directory being missing.
    3. A subsequent normal initialization restored the six files.
    4. The Chronicle background worker was independently observed using the same skills.bundled.enabled=false setting while sharing the main CODEX_HOME.

    This confirms the setting is mutating shared installation state rather than acting as process-local Skill visibility. It also explains why ordinary tasks can receive catalog paths such as $CODEX_HOME/skills/.system/openai-docs/SKILL.md and then fail because the advertised path has disappeared.

    Check this #19265 (comment)

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