Read/Write/Rg/etc should be internal tools, not a powershell operation in Windows.

[redknightlois]

What version of Codex is running?

codex-cli 0.34.0

Which model were you using?

gpt-5

What platform is your computer?

Windows

What steps can reproduce the bug?

Execute any operation on Windows platform.

What is the expected behavior?

The expected behavior is that it would use a native Read/Write/Rg operation should be treated as a native operation without requiring to execute powershell commands which have an entirely different security requirement.

What do you see instead?

The cli will write powershell commands to get lines of code and therefore requires the user to accept every one of them. Even allowing any command execution (very dangerous for normal usage) the performance hit of it is big.

Additional information

No response

[rockyicer]

I can not agree u more! suffer from everyday that codex using powershell to read code which degrade the performance. it is like a Ruble riding a pig. my last advice is : just adopt roo code or copy their work, haha.

[CarlosGtrz]

Same problem here. It wastes lots of tokens to do simple file edits, sometimes even causing users to exceed weekly usage limits.

Sometimes it uses pwsh.exe, and sometimes it even tries to run Python scripts.

Regular file edit tools work perfectly when it uses them.

[sebthom]

I have rg installed and for now added this to AGENTS.md:

## Tooling & Shell Usage
- Prefer the bundled bash helpers (`bash -lc`) when invoking shell commands; always set the `workdir` parameter.
- Use `rg`/`rg --files` for searches; fall back only if unavailable.
- Avoid PowerShell-specific commands.

Works fine for me.

[BumpyClock]

It's frustrating that it stll uses python scripts to edit files and makes mistakes as well

[isinicyn]

I now understand why Codex can take seven hours to solve a problem.
My Codex spends 20 minutes editing a single file via PowerShell, simply because it doesn't understand the encoding. Then it moves on to another file and the cycle repeats. It's just an endless loop of attempts to edit the file.

[BumpyClock]

I have rg installed and for now added this to AGENTS.md:

Tooling & Shell Usage

• Prefer the bundled bash helpers (bash -lc) when invoking shell commands; always set the workdir parameter.
• Use rg/rg --files for searches; fall back only if unavailable.
• Avoid PowerShell-specific commands.
  Works fine for me.

Thanks for this, I've added a few other tools and the speed has dramatically improved.

Tooling & Shell Usage

• Prefer the bundled bash helpers (bash -lc) when invoking shell commands; always set the workdir parameter.
• Use rg/rg --files for searches; fall back only if unavailable.
• use sed for in-place file edits.
• Use git & gh for version control operations.
• Use jq for JSON processing.
• Avoid PowerShell-specific commands. CRITICAL DO NOT USE PYTHON, PERL or OTHER SCRIPTS TO MANIPULATE FILES.

make sure you install the following using winget
winget install BurntSushi.ripgrep.GNU
winget install mbuilov.sed
winget install jqlang.jq

[hi-fox]

Yes - PLEASE fix this. Gemini CLI can read a 10,000 line codebase in about 8 seconds with Read_many_files and i am sat here for 10 minutes approving 40 different powershell commands before codex even has the project in context. These functions need to be internal tools that do not need approval (any read-only tool should not need approval)

The model is fantastic, GPT-5-high is incredibly capable and smart, but man using Codex is just a chore. I do not expect the most time-consuming task of editing some files to be simply approving Codex reading them in the first place

[iamjackharper]

I though this was some sort of bug cause first release and I switched back to gpt-5
So gpt-5-codex is really supposed to use terminal commands to read and edit files? Doesn't make much sense cause you can't even undo. Is this a bug? Surely is not optimal and I saw it ending in loops for easy tasks.
Edit: I'm using with VSCode extension on MacOS, so gpt-5-codex uses commands like "cat" to edit files instead of editing in the chat like gpt-5

[redknightlois]

No, you run the same request in Linux and it is a blast. Not as capable as GPT-5 but it is fine for most usages. The problem is that GPT-5 can do more with less requests using Powershell so it is faster, but it is waaaaay slower than on Linux.

[BumpyClock]

yeah the Windows experience is just outright terrible right now. Windows support exists in the sense that that codex runs on WIndows but since the native read and write tools don't exist on windows it is painfully slow and outright broken