✗ codex-code-mode-host: No such file or directory (os error 2)

Codex CLI 0.144.0 shipped with a helper-binary resolution bug that broke tool execution across almost every install method at once — the standalone installer, Homebrew, Scoop, and Arch packaging. The tracking issue, #31831, drew 31 comments and 79 reactions after the July 9 release, with three OpenAI maintainers replying the same day and a hotfix out that evening.

Symptoms

• Tool-backed operations fail with failed to spawn code-mode host /opt/homebrew/bin/codex-code-mode-host: No such file or directory (os error 2) (Homebrew cask report); standalone installs see the same error with ~/.local/bin/codex-code-mode-host (#31831).
• Instead of a crash, the model may reply in-chat: “I’m blocked by the local Codex command runner: ~/.local/bin/codex-code-mode-host is missing” (original report).
• codex doctor reports a consistent install even while the helper is missing, per Scoop and Homebrew reports in-thread.
• One commenter reported the failure degrading silently — the model fabricating tool results rather than failing the turn (in-thread diagnosis).

Cause

As diagnosed in the issue thread, codex resolves codex-code-mode-host as a sibling of the running executable using the un-canonicalized current_exe() path. The standalone installer symlinks ~/.local/bin/codex to the real binary under ~/.codex/packages/standalone/current/bin/, but never symlinks the helper — so the sibling lookup lands in ~/.local/bin, where the helper never existed. Homebrew, Scoop, and Arch had a second problem: their packages didn’t ship the helper at all. OpenAI’s etraut-openai confirmed a fix was in progress the same day, and rust-v0.144.1 published hours later.

Fix

1. Standalone install: rerun the official installer — curl -fsSL https://chatgpt.com/codex/install.sh | sh — which etraut-openai confirmed includes the fix.
2. Homebrew: upgrade the cask. PR #274225 bumped it to 0.144.1 on July 10; an earlier attempt to swap release assets was backed out over Apple signing constraints, per maintainer anp-oai.
3. Pinned to 0.144.0? Symlink the helper: ln -s ~/.codex/packages/standalone/releases/0.144.0-aarch64-apple-darwin/bin/codex-code-mode-host ~/.local/bin/codex-code-mode-host, swapping the platform triple to match yours (confirmed working in-thread).
4. Or disable the feature: codex -c features.code_mode_host=false, or code_mode_host = false under [features] in config.toml. One Linuxbrew user hit a “code-mode host exited during handshake” error after symlinking — the config flag restored functionality.
5. No local copy anywhere (Scoop, Arch)? Download codex-code-mode-host for your platform from the 0.144.1 release and place it next to the codex binary.

Affected versions

The issue is filed against 0.144.0; the rust-v0.144.1 hotfix published July 9, 2026, the same day, and the Homebrew cask followed on July 10.

Facts on this page verified July 15, 2026.