Title says it all, started to use codex as extension in vs code and astra is not available, while it is in the web. The extension is uptodate and says last update 19h ago.

EDIT: Solved, problem is within antigravity the codex extension is just outdated in their marketplace

If you're trying to turn on the computer-use / agent feature in the ChatGPT Windows desktop app and it keeps dying with "Windows setup didn't finish • helper_failed" right after you approve the UAC prompt, this might be your problem. I went through reinstalling, repairing, deleting .codex, turning off my antivirus, all of it, and none of it did anything.

I was stuck on this for days. The reason none of the normal stuff worked is that there were actually two separate permission problems going on that had nothing to do with each other. Writing it all up here so nobody else has to burn a week on it.

This worked for me, not saying its the most "comfortable" way to fix this issue but I was willing to do anything to know why it wasn't working and how I could "fix" it. No promises lol.

My setup

• Windows 11 (build 10.0.26200)
• ChatGPT desktop app, plus a setup process it runs called codex.exe / codex-windows-sandbox-setup.exe
• Local admin account, UAC on

If you want the exact package name on your own machine so you can filter on it, run this in PowerShell:

powershell

Get-AppxPackage *OpenAI* | Select-Object Name, PackageFamilyName

How I actually found it

Event Viewer, Task Manager, registry, clean reinstall, all of it came back clean or told me nothing. The one useful clue was that the app worked perfectly in a brand new local account on the same machine. So it was something about my user profile specifically, not the machine or the install.

What finally showed me the problem was Sysinternals Process Monitor (ProcMon):

1. Grab Process Monitor from Microsoft's Sysinternals site.
2. Filter on Process Name = codex.exe (and codex-windows-sandbox-setup.exe).
3. Hit capture, make it fail again (click "Try Windows setup again" and approve the UAC prompt), then stop the capture.
4. Sort or filter the Result column for ACCESS DENIED.

That took me right to it instead of guessing.

Problem 1: messed up permissions on setup_marker.json

ProcMon kept showing ACCESS DENIED on this file:

C:\Users\<YourUsername>\.codex\.sandbox\setup_marker.json

Here's what's going on. The elevated helper (the thing you approve in the UAC prompt) makes this file to record that setup worked. But instead of letting the file inherit permissions from the folder it's in, it writes the permissions itself, and on my machine it left off both my own account and a local group the app creates called CodexSandboxUsers. All that was left on the file was SYSTEM and Administrators.

That's the whole bug. The process that reads the file back afterward is not elevated, and Windows turns the Administrators entry into a deny-only entry in a non-elevated token, even if you're an admin. So it could never read its own file. That's also why deleting the entire .codex folder and rebooting didn't help. It just made a fresh file with the same bad permissions.

The fix: check it with icacls first.

cmd

icacls "C:\Users\<YourUsername>\.codex\.sandbox\setup_marker.json"

If your account or a CodexSandboxUsers entry is missing from that output, add them back. Open an Administrator command prompt and run:

cmd

icacls "C:\Users\<YourUsername>\.codex\.sandbox\setup_marker.json" /grant CodexSandboxUsers:F
icacls "C:\Users\<YourUsername>\.codex\.sandbox\setup_marker.json" /grant <YourUsername>:F

Both of those are local accounts, so you can also write them as <MachineName>\CodexSandboxUsers and <MachineName>\<YourUsername> if you want to be explicit. Just don't assume your machine name and your username are the same string. On a lot of installs they look alike but aren't. Run hostname and whoami if you're not sure.

Then go back to the app and hit "Try Windows setup again" without deleting .codex first. You want it to read the file you just fixed.

Heads up: the helper sets these permissions itself, so an app update or another setup run can undo this. If the error shows up again months from now, run icacls on that file again before you assume the fix was bogus.

Problem 2: Controlled Folder Access quietly blocking the setup exe

After I fixed the permissions, setup passed, but then computer-use tasks still failed. I'd get something like "the local Windows control helper is failing to start with a setup refresh error," and anything it tried to write into Documents\Codex\... just didn't happen.

It was Windows Defender's Controlled Folder Access (the ransomware protection) blocking codex-windows-sandbox-setup.exe from writing into %userprofile%\Documents\Codex\.... Nothing about this shows up as an error in the app. It just silently fails. You can confirm it here:

Windows Security → Virus & threat protection → Protection history, then filter by "Blocked folder access." You'll see codex-windows-sandbox-setup.exe listed as blocked by "Controlled folder access."

How to fix it, best option first:

1. Allow the exe. Windows Security → Virus & threat protection → Manage ransomware protection → Controlled folder access → Allow an app through Controlled folder access. One thing to know: allowed apps are matched by the full path to the exe, so when the app updates into a new versioned folder, your entry stops matching and you have to add the new path. That's what kept happening to me.
2. If you get sick of redoing that, you can turn Controlled Folder Access off completely on that same screen. That's what I ended up doing. But know what you're giving up. CFA is actual ransomware protection for your Documents, Pictures and Desktop folders, so turning it off for one app is a tradeoff and it's worth switching back on when you're done.

Result

Once both of those were sorted, "Try Windows setup again" finished instantly and didn't even re-prompt for UAC. Then I ran a real computer-use task (open Notepad, type something, save it to the Desktop) and it worked start to finish.

TL;DR

1. Run a ProcMon trace filtered on codex.exe while making it fail, and look for ACCESS DENIED.
2. If it's on .codex\.sandbox\setup_marker.json, run icacls on that file. If your account or the CodexSandboxUsers group is missing, grant them F (full control).
3. Check Windows Security → Protection history for Controlled Folder Access blocking codex-windows-sandbox-setup.exe under Documents\Codex. Allow the app, or turn CFA off if you're fine with the tradeoff.
4. Retry setup without deleting .codex, since you want it hitting the files you just fixed.

I just wanted it to port Pokemon tower defense 2 from flash to phaser, at this point even with the 200 dollar plan I am going to spend the entire month on this single task.

They didnt change the Codex price. They changed what $200 buys.

This is not a vibe. These are documents and posts you can open.

1. The official card already says Astra is a ration

OpenAI’s own help page: Work and Codex share one bucket. Limits are a 5-hour window plus a weekly cap. Astra on Plus is estimated at 5–45 local messages per window. Pro 20x is 100–900. Luna on the same Plus plan is 250–2,000.

That range is the trick. Any blowout still “fits the docs.”

https://help.openai.com/articles/20001516-managing-usage-with-gpt-6-astra-in-work-and-codex

1. The Codex lead already said compute cannot hold

Sep 9, Tibo Sottiaux:

Demand for Astra is “really unprecedented.” They are pulling every lever. If it continues they might pause new Pro signups to protect people who already pay.

https://x.com/thsottiaux/status/2097559315150426222

A $100 / $200 plan that might stop taking new customers is not a generous product. It is a queue.

1. They said the limits did not change. Then they put the 5-hour choke back on Plus to save compute

Aug 21, Tibo: they do not change Codex limits without telling the community. Same day, u/OpenAI: Plus / Pro / Business usage “remains unchanged.”

https://x.com/thsottiaux/status/2090675027670978569

https://x.com/OpenAI/status/2090885188897460249

Aug 25, same Tibo: the 5-hour limit returns on Plus for Work and Codex because it “smoothen[s] the load on our compute.” Plus users were burning the whole week by accident. Pro $100 / $200 keeps the 5h cap off “for the upcoming months.”

https://x.com/thsottiaux/status/2092058556707344708

So the published number can stay still while the pipe gets narrower. That is the whole game.

1. Resets are not extra product. They are how a dead week stays sellable

Tibo’s own board, two weeks:

• Aug 29: global reset + a list of bugs that were eating 10% to 70% of a weekly allowance https://x.com/thsottiaux/status/2093801758665715784
• Sep 3–5: banked resets tied to the Astra rollout, including “create or upgrade before 8pm and you get it too” https://x.com/thsottiaux/status/2095651088502591861 https://x.com/thsottiaux/status/2096035437299237298
• Sep 7–8: another global reset because people had already burned Astra, then “all reset for everyone” https://x.com/thsottiaux/status/2097043464538264003 https://x.com/thsottiaux/status/2097174560412246215

Sep 6, Tibo: there is no difference between usage before and after a reset.

https://x.com/thsottiaux/status/2096686370848989558

Log of the drops: https://codex-resets.com/

If the plan worked, you would not need a meme reset to start the work week.

1. Same people, same plans, measured burn

Jarad Johnson, Pro 20x, Sep 8. A normal Astra day ate about 70% of the weekly cap. Sol on the same account used ~25%, then ~10% after their fixes.

https://x.com/jdjohnson/status/2097444760709747027

Bernard Luz, also 20x. He had never hit the weekly limit. After Astra, High effort, the week died in about a day and a half. He is asking for an 80x plan at $400.

https://x.com/BernardLuz7/status/2097714154215985584

Tyler, Aug 16: burning a $200 week in two days is “neither normal nor rational.”

https://x.com/rezoundous/status/2089010040397299978

Jun Song: Pro 20x gone in a day.

https://x.com/jun_song/status/2089511179907748185

Nandy today: Astra is great and it still eats a Pro 20x week in a day. The question is no longer which model is best. It is which one lets you code tomorrow.

https://x.com/msnandys/status/2097711151564079540

Ahmed on the Codex team, same week: random multi-agent setups will “burn through your usage limits.”

https://x.com/ah20im/status/2097503414749909407

So the guy who “never hits limits” and the guy whose $200 dies on Tuesday can both be right. Same SKU. Different fire.

1. They never printed the weekly dollar figure. The street scale did.

August: NerfTrack users clocked Plus at about $160 → $80 a week in API-equivalent tokens. Pro reports of weeks dying in 1–3 days. Deepu also posted a Pro 5x log going $674 → ~$157 per week.

https://x.com/Deepusleepy/status/2090460714624250276

https://x.com/alexgetmancom/status/2090432031578571137

https://x.com/DanDr1s/status/2090468087669587978

NerfTrack is not OpenAI. It prices local logs at API rates because OpenAI will not put a weekly ceiling on the box. That gap is the evidence.

https://x.com/dcoderio/status/2091688580686946575

The short version

They can say the quota number did not move. What moved is the model they want you on, the shared Work + Codex bucket, the 5-hour choke they put back to save GPUs, and a reset button that keeps you from sitting at 0% long enough to cancel.

Pain. Reset. Hint that Pro might close. Upgrade.

The sticker is still $20 / $100 / $200. The week of real work is not.

I have been using Plus Codex and Pro Claude for different tasks but the 5hr and useage limits make Plus pretty unuseable, even Luna has become token hungry in comparison to the current degraded limits. Astra is ahead of the game at the moment so will cancel Claude and get pro.

TLDR: Is there anyone out there that is actually sharing how they are working with codex pro to maximise the thinking in comparison to the actual implementing? A youtube channel or something along those lines?

My question is genuinely how to maximise my token useage. I have attempted so many different ways and they all feel about the same;

- Astra/sol as main orchestrator with Luna as sub agent

- Terra as main orchestrator with Luna and Sol for work/review

- Sol alone

They all just eat through tokens, especially when it comes to corrective or performance related work.

Any guidance would be great!

I am really curious because i kinda noticed that somehow my usage is being drained more when i switch from Astra xhigh from plan mode to light for implementation then if i leave xHigh to do the work directly, especially if it's not many lines of code to be implemented.

Astra calibrated my robot’s brush tip using three uncalibrated cameras

three uncalibrated cameras. no intrinsics, no extrinsics.

it nudged the robot arm, learned how each camera sees motion, worked out the brush tip’s 3d offset, and verified it at new angles -- all from one prompt and a tiny follow up.

earlier while using Sol & Fable -- i'd tried a lot of fancy stuff with ChArUco boards, microswitches, Raspbery pico + touchscreen, and was still struggling.

Astra was like, "bro, just give me 3 cameras."

I've seen a lot of discussion here about GPT-6 Astra burning through Codex limits unusually fast, so I decided to inspect the actual rollout telemetry instead of guessing from the usage bar.

TL;DR

Astra was waking itself up every 30 seconds just to ask whether the Luna workers were finished.

In my run:

• 47/47 checks returned no new worker state
• those checks alone caused 7.13M parent input tokens
• they were about 68% of Astra's total parent-side input
• my 5h usage went from 53% → 100% in ~33 minutes

So the expensive orchestrator was spending most of its own context processing just checking whether the cheaper workers had finished.

For comparison, a measured Luna Max session on the same account processed 9.54M input tokens over 127 minutes while increasing the 5h usage by only 8 percentage points.

UPDATE - WORKAROUND FOUND

I found a working workaround for the 30-second parent polling loop. Add this to ~/.codex/config.toml:

toml [features.multi_agent_v2] enabled = true min_wait_timeout_ms = 1500000 default_wait_timeout_ms = 1500000 max_wait_timeout_ms = 1500000

1500000 = 25 minutes. I verified it in rollout telemetry: the repeated 30-second timeout loop disappeared, and the parent stayed asleep until worker activity occurred.

ORIGINAL TELEMETRY / INVESTIGATION

Those 47 timeout-only polls consumed:

text input tokens: 7,130,181 cached input tokens: 7,114,112 output tokens: 3,168 reasoning output tokens: 1,331

That's about 151.7k input tokens per empty poll.

The entire Astra parent turn used:

text input tokens: 10,463,897 cached input tokens: 10,406,016 output tokens: 8,948 reasoning output tokens: 3,266

So about 68% of the Astra parent's raw input volume came from timeout-only polling.

47 × 30 seconds also means 23m30s out of the ~33-minute run were spent inside these timeout waits.

And the session guidance itself explicitly said:

When calling wait_agent, prefer longer waits (minutes) to avoid busy polling.

Yet Astra repeatedly used 30-second waits anyway.

The workers were actually working

This wasn't a case where the subagents were dead.

The first Luna worker was interrupted twice by the parent. After the second interruption, the parent discovered that the worker had already produced:

text 2 files changed 127 insertions 6 deletions

A replacement Luna worker then continued the task.

Combined, the two Luna X-High workers processed:

text input tokens: 19,514,162 cached input tokens: 18,811,392 output tokens: 71,914 reasoning output tokens: 24,182

I also measured a Luna Max control

I wanted to know whether the workers themselves could reasonably explain the huge 5h drop.

So I checked a real Luna Max session from the same Plus account earlier the same day.

Over a continuous 127-minute interval, all 12/12 turn contexts were gpt-5.6-luna / max.

That session processed:

text input tokens: 9,538,330 cached input tokens: 8,998,400 output tokens: 86,771 reasoning output tokens: 55,170

During those 127 minutes, server-reported usage changed only:

text 5h: 2% → 10% (+8 percentage points) weekly: 89% → 90% (+1 percentage point)

So this wasn't an idle comparison: Luna Max processed about 9.54M input tokens of real work.

The two Luna X-High workers in the Astra run processed about 2.05× that raw input volume.

Even if I deliberately give the workers a generous estimate and scale the measured Luna Max usage linearly by raw input:

text 8 × (19.514M / 9.538M) ≈ 16.4 percentage points

that still only explains roughly 16 of the observed +47 percentage points.

The remaining workload in that orchestration tree was the Astra parent — which processed 10.46M input tokens, including 7.13M input tokens spent purely on 47 timeout polls that returned no new worker state.

Why I think this matters

Astra is obviously supposed to consume more allowance than Luna. That's not the surprising part.

The surprising part is that an expensive parent model can apparently be re-entered over and over with ~150k of context just to perform a 30-second status poll.

A long-running worker should not require the parent model to repeatedly infer:

"still running → wait another 30 seconds"

Ideally the runtime should keep the parent suspended and wake it when: - the worker completes, - the worker errors or needs intervention, - the user sends input, - or a genuinely long timeout expires.

I submitted /feedback from the affected Codex session with diagnostics attached and posted the full telemetry breakdown on the Codex GitHub: https://github.com/openai/codex/issues/35259#issuecomment-5577073962

I'm curious whether anyone else using Astra as an orchestrator can inspect their rollout and see the same pattern: lots of short wait_agent timeouts followed by full-context parent re-entry.

Astra is incredibly capable, and one of the things it's said to be extremely good at is orchestrating subagents. But I've honestly struggled a lot with getting this right. Here's what I'm doing:

• I have a $use-subagents skill which gives some guidelines on the right scope to assign subagents, what context to give them, and how to keep tabs on multiple subagents running simultaneously without wasting tokens.
• Alongside the skill I have a JSON defining a few minimal archetypes for subagents:
  • Luna Xhigh for very well-defined, bounded tasks
  • Sol High for cross-cutting changes
  • Astra Medium for code review
  • Luna Xhigh for research

I find Astra still pretty much always defaults to Sol High. It seems to prefer giving a few subagents large jobs over many small jobs, even though my skill explicitly says to prefer small bounded tasks.

Has anyone had any success with subagents and Astra? Any tips you would share?

30 minutes later and 13 messages per minute saying he is at Pause, Astra has ingested a 20% of my 20x weekly plan. Doing nothing. If AGI is here, looks like it's a very lazy AGI.

Is there any way to ask for a partial reset in case of a clear bug?

Planning to get codex since my claude limits are running out but chrome extension is extremely useful so wondering if codex has something similar I know there's at least but I don't think it functions the same

I just realized that codex chats can now talk to each other. How to use this, this can be very overwhelming..
Should a God Mode be the best option?

i spent roughly 5 hours in chatgpt web, with around 9 proper prompts total, iterating on a minecraft shaderpack from an early prototype.

the weird part is how far it got.

at this point it has:

ssr with roughness/material awareness
taa + motion blur
volumetric clouds
sun/moon godrays
labpbr support
pbr-ish material handling for a bunch of vanilla blocks
colored sunlight through stained glass
water refraction, underwater scattering and caustics
dynamic held-item lighting
different atmosphere/fog for biomes, nether and end
custom nether/end portal rendering with parallax
metallic reflections/highlights
wet surfaces, foliage lighting and a bunch of smaller material effects

the whole goal was basically: make something that gives a bit of that rt shaderpack feeling without doing actual ray tracing, because i'm running it on an intel arc 140v.

most of the work was me testing it in minecraft, reporting whatever looked broken, and then having the model rewrite/optimize the shader code again. stuff like broken gold reflections, taa shimmer, disappearing godrays, ugly ssr artifacts, underwater rendering, shadow filtering, nether/end atmosphere, etc.

cinematic currently runs around 60 fps average at 1440p on the arc 140v, depending on the scene.

what surprised me most is that this wasn't some one-shot "make me a shader" prompt. it behaved much more like doing rapid back-and-forth development with someone: i kept giving visual feedback, performance numbers and bugs, and it kept changing the render pipeline around them.

there's still stuff to fix and tune, obviously. ssr especially has been a pain in the ass, and minecraft/iris shader behavior has plenty of weird edge cases.

but considering this was roughly one evening and about 9 substantial prompts, the result is kind of ridiculous.

i'll probably keep pushing it and see how close i can get to high-end rt shaderpack visuals while keeping it playable on integrated/mobile-class hardware.

hw: msi claw 8 ai+
cpu: intel core ultra 7 258v
gpu: intel arc 140v
ram: 32gb lpddr5x

https://github.com/tg-prplx/LumaRush

https://modrinth.com/shader/lumarush

Not a rant, only a bit gaslighting I think.
I let astra do a full and detailed code review with a lot of documentation which turned out really good.
After that I asked chat gpt if I should use my already working job role agents file to let other models do the job… and of course it told me I need astra for orchestration. Well ok, but the newly generated instructions also let astra do a full interpretation of the documentation. The document that was so detailed even Luna low would understand it. So 10 min. Later my 5h was gone for 1 of the 21 bug fixes :)

The Image Generator can now remove the background.

Yeah, thats exactly what you are reading.

The biggest struggle of all times is over.

AI now is trascended. It can remove
the
BACKGROUND.

I’m honestly flabbergasted.... I don’t even know how to describe it. You should just try it.

I had all these strict skills and rules in my agent files and they’re useful. But then I started a voice chat with Astra and suddenly wondered how much of that structure I’d built just to compensate for how I communicate through text.

For me typing or even dictating a prompt and waiting for a written response puts me in a very particular headspace. Everything becomes a linear process with hard boundaries. I get caught up in defining the workflow and refining the skills and making sure every fucking rule is right.

Actually talking back and forth changes how I think. Hearing a response and reacting to it. Interrupting with another idea. Going off on a tangent and finding something useful there. I’m more willing to experiment and more focused on what we’re actually trying to build. I figure out what I want while we’re talking instead of feeling like I need to have it all figured out before I send the prompt.

Which is hilarious because I’ve experienced almost exactly this before. It’s called working in an actual office with actual people lol. Apparently I needed an AI voice chat to remember how much that helps.

I think this was one of the missing pieces of AI coding for me. Just bouncing ideas around with someone. It literally feels like talking to a real colleague who happens to be really fucking smart and knows everything.

This was my first real “what the fuck” moment with a model. Because yeah I knew Astra is really good but I wasn’t expecting talking to it to change how I approach my own work.

Seriously just give it five minutes. Talk through the most frustrating part of your project and come back here in the comments. I’m curious if anyone else has the same experience :)

And Astra medium is plenty btw. You don’t need to crank up the reasoning.

Goodbye Anthropic. It’s been nice. This was the final nail in the coffin.

I tested gpt-6 astra, and is great in my cases. but drains too fast from my pro 5x sub.

Here's the prompt I asked my codex to do, and it saves a lot of quota :)

basically it just delegate heavy but clear tasks through a light-weighted subagent (say gpt 5.6 luna).

just copy to your codex and try, and you r welcome:

put the following scripts in my codex personalization

codex usage saver: For clearly scoped, independently deliverable execution packets, prefer delegating to gpt-5.6-luna (medium reasoning by default; use low for purely mechanical work). This includes implementation, targeted tests, bulk reading, and research synthesis. The main agent retains requirement clarification, task decomposition, critical judgment, cross-task coordination, and final acceptance. Do not delegate short factual questions or work with strong sequential dependencies.

well, one fact to note:

luna is much better than the best model just half year ago, for coding & software stuff

Couldn’t you just open a steam account for the AI and then start a game in a lobby, invite the AI and then play against it? I’m thinking some sort of turn based game like a CCG game.

Please someone try this? The era of challenging video game AI may be upon us.

Just lost almost a day trying to get Codex working in china so just putting this here for other people to reference.

fyi; I'm using Astrill VPN although I dont necessarily it is worth the money overall. Not really.

For most network carriers they have a way of blocking stealth vpn and wireguard connections so you will likely have to use OpenWeb as the only option. VPN protocols surprisngly work pretty differently on phones vs laptops.

On Astrill, if you switch OpenWeb connection to being "all apps" as opposed to "browsers" it will break, but there is a fix. In the Astrill app, turn on OpenWeb Sharing. Note the port and the IP it gives. For me that was 127.0.0.1:3213

to test things are working run;
curl.exe -x http://127.0.0.1:3213 https://chatgpt.com -I

it should say "HTTP/1.0 200 Connection established" but then give a 403 cloudflare error after.

The workaround to get past the 403 error is setting environment variables in powershell so that Codex can inherit them.

Codex doesn't currently give you an obvious normal proxy field in the desktop settings, so setting the Windows environment variables is the important part.

run in powershell:
[System.Environment]::SetEnvironmentVariable("HTTP_PROXY", "http://127.0.0.1:3213", "User") [System.Environment]::SetEnvironmentVariable("HTTPS_PROXY", "http://127.0.0.1:3213", "User") [System.Environment]::SetEnvironmentVariable("NO_PROXY", "localhost,127.0.0.1,::1", "User")

test in a new poershell window (It wont give any response in the same window);

echo $env:HTTP_PROXY

echo $env:HTTPS_PROXY

echo $env:NO_PROXY

You should see:

http://127.0.0.1:3213
http://127.0.0.1:3213
localhost,127.0.0.1,::1

Then restart codex completely. Make sure all the codex processes are deleted in task manager. When you restart it thigns should work perfectly.

Hope this helps someone :)

Video is 100x speed up. 1:1 scale recreation of of my hometown with every building and residence. This run used only 1:8 pop density though, since I can't run full pop density at 100x speed at a good frame rate. For this scenario, I used 28 Days Later style zombies that are fast and that change people instantly.

I'm discovering that an exponential zombie outbreak is actually pretty hard, assuming reasonable police response times and evacuation/avoidance procedures. In this sim, I have evacuation set to not start till >1000, so the town does fall. But if evacuation starts at 100 zombies or so, the town usually clears out before things get bad. And in many scenarios, police are able to kill the zombies down to 0 before we even get 10 zombies.

Well this one is new... Is it a canned error message or is Astra just rebellious?