agent-signals

067. The Codex app-server daemon runs with no TUI and updates on its own

View as Markdown Open in Claude Open in ChatGPT
Date
2026-10-31
Agents
Codex CLI
Measured on
real machine

Measured

2026-10-31, Codex CLI 0.164.0 (standalone install), on macOS 26.6.2 (arm64). The probe kit (probes/run.sh, probe codex/unix.sh) read ps, lsof and the names in ~/.codex/. It read no content.

The same day, the kit ran on Ubuntu 24.04.5 (x64), with the same Codex CLI version. It also ran on Windows 11 Pro 10.0.26300 (x64), with Codex CLI 0.164.0 installed in ~\AppData\Local\Programs\OpenAI\Codex\bin\. Measured on: real machine.

What was measured

  1. No Codex TUI ran. Two daemon processes ran:
    • ~/.codex/packages/app-server-daemon/releases/0.166.0-aarch64-apple-darwin/bin/codex, with parent process 1 and no tty. It started about 23 h before the probe.
    • A child of that process, the same program, with --listen unix:// --analytics-default-enabled --managed-daemon.
  2. On Ubuntu, the same two processes ran from releases/0.166.0-x86_64-unknown-linux-musl/. The parent of the daemon was the systemd user manager, not process 1. The daemon started 7 days before the probe, and its child 2 days before the probe. app-server-daemon/releases/ also held 0.165.0. No TUI ran.
  3. On Windows, three processes ran with no TUI: codex.exe app-server --listen unix:// --analytics-default-enabled --managed-daemon, its child codex-code-mode-host.exe, and codex.exe app-server daemon <arg>. Their path was \\?\~\.codex\packages\app-server-daemon\releases\0.166.0-x86_64-pc-windows-msvc\bin\. The daemon listens on unix:// on Windows too: ~\.codex\app-server-control\app-server-control.sock. ~\.codex\app-server-daemon\ held daemon.pid, daemon-updater.pid, their .lock files and .stderr.log files. ~\.codex\packages\app-server-daemon\ held auto-update-version and selection-history.
  4. The daemon was version 0.166.0 on all three machines. The command codex gave codex-cli 0.164.0. ~/.codex/packages/ held app-server-daemon/releases/0.164.0-…, app-server-daemon/releases/0.166.0-… and standalone/releases/0.164.0-….
  5. The daemon held no rollout file and no thread lock open.
  6. ~/.codex/ held these names that fact 026 does not list: app-server-control/, app-server-daemon/, goals_1.sqlite, memories_1.sqlite, queue_1.sqlite, thread_history_1.sqlite, tui-thread-reference-capabilities/ and .sqlite-maintenance.lock. Ubuntu had the same names.
  7. The last records of the newest rollout file had the types event_msg (thread_settings_applied, task_started, item_completed, token_count, task_complete), turn_context, response_item (message) and token_usage_record.

Mechanism

The daemon of fact 026 does not stop when the last TUI stops. It updates from its own release folder, so its version can be newer than the version of the codex command.

A reader that finds a daemon must not count it as a session. A reader that reports the Codex version must say whose version it is: the command, or the daemon that holds the rollout files.

Incident

None.

Screens

None.

Not measured