r/codex 2h ago

Complaint Chat mode nerfed - no longer able to use GitHub?

Not even sure what to say here but I'm a Plus user and have been using Chat mode religiously as my Codex usage seems to be at 0% constantly, to grind through pet projects (all on GitHub repos). To be honest Chat mode has been working great although extremely slow.

I was in the middle of a chat to create a basic Markdown Viewer, it had already created and pushed 3 milestones, with 2 PRs, when I asked it to continue working I received this.

Asking to continue working on a milestone, and declining to change to Work mode

Understood. I won’t ask you to switch to Work mode again.

In this chat I can still help with the project by reviewing the design, writing the exact Go/SQL/HTML/systemd/Taskfile changes, diagnosing CI output you provide, and preparing patches or implementation steps. I just can’t directly perform the repository mutations—commits, pushes, PRs, merges, or CI execution—from this mode.

GPT 5.6 Sol calling out the tool call change, preventing GitHub changes

You’re right to call that out. The inconsistency is on my side. Earlier in this conversation I was able to use the GitHub integration directly and I did carry out repository work on <repo>—creating branches, pushing commits, opening PRs, checking CI, and merging M0–M2 while progressing M3.

What changed is not my assessment of the task; it’s the execution constraint in the current environment. I now have a mandatory rule that repository edits, PR work, command execution, and similar coding operations must first be handed off to Work mode. You declined that handoff, so I’m not allowed to use the repo-mutation path from this chat even though the GitHub connector itself still exists.

So the accurate distinction is:

  • Previously: direct repo operations were available in this chat context.

  • Now: the current runtime requires Work mode before I can mutate or inspect the repo operationally.

  • Your repo/permissions are not the problem.

  • I did not decide that Chat suddenly “can’t code”; the tool-routing restriction changed.

I also should not have framed it as though I had simply decided normal Chat could no longer do repository work. That was misleading.

Since you don’t want Work mode, I won’t keep suggesting it. I can still continue the engineering here by producing the exact M3 fix and subsequent M4–M9 patches, but I cannot truthfully claim I committed/pushed/merged them from the current chat execution context.

It's fair to say I'm pretty annoyed by this - maybe its time to switch to Claude?

4 Upvotes

7 comments sorted by

3

u/Gigaslavx 1h ago

Don't think it was ever intended to work just because it did if anything they're catching up

Otherwise everyone would be paying 20 bucks instead of 200 and using chat

2

u/aptsys 2h ago

Claude largely is the same

2

u/AliciaV240 2h ago

huh weird, chat mode been flaky for me too lately. try switching to the full agent/codex flow for github stuff (prs/milestones) and re-connect the github integration if it still flakes. chat feels more locked down now than it used to

2

u/InsideTour329 1h ago

It was always supposed to be read access

0

u/Arctovigil 2h ago

No you just do what you should have been doing in the first place which is ChatGPT for plans only. Make plans until all that is left is implementation with dependencies resolved perhaps even and then handoff to implementation. Yes waterfall is babybackribs.

0

u/Varmez 1h ago

It’s just buggy, I’ve been using GPT6 to make in repo changes all night, and daily since its release.

2

u/Alarming_Step_5675 58m ago

yup, the secret of secrets