Codex CLI Installs Background Daemon by Default, With No Official Way to Disable It
A tool that installs a self-updating background process users cannot turn off through any official setting shifts the trust question from what the CLI does in a session to what it keeps doing after the window closes.
Reporting from 1 source: GIGAZINE.
Starting with version 0.157.0 of the AI Codex CLI, the daemon_auto_start feature is enabled by default. Launching the CLI installs a platform package of about 374MB and starts a persistent background daemon that survives the CLI window closing, checks for updates once five minutes after startup and then hourly, and restarts the backend on new releases. No official setting disables it.
The daemon's version is managed separately from the CLI version, and its parent process changes to process ID 1 once the CLI window closes. In the auto-update process, the grace period for running tasks is limited to 60 seconds, after which they may be forcibly terminated. Reported issues include proxy setting changes that cannot be applied because environment variables are fixed, behavior that diverges from package managers because the daemon updates itself, an auto-update process that the daemon stop command cannot halt, and a bug that changes file permissions during auto-updating and leaves the Git repository read-only.
Synthesized by Yomimono from the 1 cited source below, including Japanese-language reporting where cited, then editorially reviewed before publishing.