OpenAI Codex Issue Revives Push for .codexignore
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- OpenAI Codex issue #2847 requests a built-in mechanism — described as a repo-local
.codexignoreplus a global ignore file — to explicitly mark files and paths the agent must never read or send to the model. - The requester lists concrete files to block by default, including
.env,.env.,.pem,id_,.aws/, and.ssh/, while keepingnode_modules/searchable for implementation checks. - The issue argues the configuration should be deterministic, shareable across teams and repos, and support user defaults rather than relying on project documentation or conventions.
- A related issue, #205, surfaced the same two use cases — preventing sensitive data from reaching the model and excluding large or irrelevant files — and was closed in favor of a Rust implementation known as codex-rs.
- As of 2025-08-28, a comparable ignore-file feature does not appear to exist in codex-rs, according to the new issue, which aims to restart the design discussion.
- The requester offers to implement the feature and write tests, and labels the issue as both an enhancement and a sandbox/permissions concern.
Why it matters: Without a first-class ignore file, developers using Codex on real codebases must rely on ad-hoc conventions to keep credentials, keys, and cloud configs out of model context — a gap the requester documents as unresolved even after the project's Rust rewrite, exposing any team adopting Codex to avoidable secret-leak risk.
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