## Summary
Fix a managed ChatGPT auth bug where a stale Codex process could
proactively refresh using an old in-memory refresh token even after
another process had already rotated auth on disk.
This changes the proactive `AuthManager::auth()` path to reuse the
existing guarded `refresh_token()` flow instead of calling the refresh
endpoint directly from cached auth state.
## Original Issue
Users reported repeated `codexd` log lines like:
```text
ERROR codex_core::auth: Failed to refresh token: error sending request for url (https://auth.openai.com/oauth/token)
```
In practice this showed up most often when multiple `codexd` processes
were left running. Killing the extra processes stopped the noise, which
suggested the issue was caused by stale auth state across processes
rather than invalid user credentials.
## Diagnosis
The bug was in the proactive refresh path used by `AuthManager::auth()`:
- Process A could refresh successfully, rotate refresh token `R0` to
`R1`, and persist the updated auth state plus `last_refresh` to disk.
- Process B could keep an older auth snapshot cached in memory, still
holding `R0` and the old `last_refresh`.
- Later, when Process B called `auth()`, it checked staleness from its
cached in-memory auth instead of first reloading from disk.
- Because that cached `last_refresh` was stale, Process B would
proactively call `/oauth/token` with stale refresh token `R0`.
- On failure, `auth()` logged the refresh error but kept returning the
same stale cached auth, so repeated `auth()` calls could keep retrying
with dead state.
This differed from the existing unauthorized-recovery flow, which
already did the safer thing: guarded reload from disk first, then
refresh only if the on-disk auth was unchanged.
## What Changed
- Switched proactive refresh in `AuthManager::auth()` to:
- do a pure staleness check on cached auth
- call `refresh_token()` when stale
- return the original cached auth on genuine refresh failure, preserving
existing outward behavior
- Removed the direct proactive refresh-from-cached-state path
- Added regression tests covering:
- stale cached auth with newer same-account auth already on disk
- the same scenario even when the refresh endpoint would fail if called
## Why This Fix
`refresh_token()` already contains the right cross-process safety
behavior:
- guarded reload from disk
- same-account verification
- skip-refresh when another process already changed auth
Reusing that path makes proactive refresh consistent with unauthorized
recovery and prevents stale processes from trying to refresh
already-rotated tokens.
## Testing
Test shape:
- create a fresh temp `CODEX_HOME` from `~/.codex/auth.json`
- force `last_refresh` to an old timestamp so proactive refresh is
required
- start two long-lived helper processes against the same auth file
- start `B` first so it caches stale auth and sleeps
- start `A` second so it refreshes first
- point both at a local mock `/oauth/token` server
- inspect whether `B` makes a second refresh request with the stale
in-memory token, or reloads the rotated token from disk
### Before the fix
The repro showed the bug clearly: the mock server saw two refreshes with
the same stale token, `A` rotated to a new token, and `B` still returned
the stale token instead of reloading from disk.
```text
POST /oauth/token refresh_token=rt_j6s0...
POST /oauth/token refresh_token=rt_j6s0...
B:cached_before=rt_j6s0...
B:cached_after=rt_j6s0...
B:returned=rt_j6s0...
A:cached_before=rt_j6s0...
A:cached_after=rotated-refresh-token-logged-run-v2
A:returned=rotated-refresh-token-logged-run-v2
```
### After the fix
After the fix, the mock server saw only one refresh request. `A`
refreshed once, and `B` started with the stale token but reloaded and
returned the rotated token.
```text
POST /oauth/token refresh_token=rt_j6s0...
B:cached_before=rt_j6s0...
B:cached_after=rotated-refresh-token-fix-branch
B:returned=rotated-refresh-token-fix-branch
A:cached_before=rt_j6s0...
A:cached_after=rotated-refresh-token-fix-branch
A:returned=rotated-refresh-token-fix-branch
```
This shows the new behavior: `A` refreshes once, then `B` reuses the
updated auth from disk instead of making a second refresh request with
the stale token.
- Move the auth implementation and token data into codex-login.
- Keep codex-core re-exporting that surface from codex-login for
existing callers.
---------
Co-authored-by: Codex <noreply@openai.com>
We've continued to receive reports from users that they're seeing the
error message "Your access token could not be refreshed because your
refresh token was already used. Please log out and sign in again." This
PR fixes two holes in the token refresh logic that lead to this
condition.
Background: A previous change in token refresh introduced the
`UnauthorizedRecovery` object. It implements a state machine in the core
agent loop that first performs a load of the on-disk auth information
guarded by a check for matching account ID. If it finds that the on-disk
version has been updated by another instance of codex, it uses the
reloaded auth tokens. If the on-disk version hasn't been updated, it
issues a refresh request from the token authority.
There are two problems that this PR addresses:
Problem 1: We weren't doing the same thing for the code path used by the
app server interface. This PR effectively replicates the
`UnauthorizedRecovery` logic for that code path.
Problem 2: The `UnauthorizedRecovery` logic contained a hole in the
`ReloadOutcome::Skipped` case. Here's the scenario. A user starts two
instances of the CLI. Instance 1 is active (working on a task), instance
2 is idle. Both instances have the same in-memory cached tokens. The
user then runs `codex logout` or `codex login` to log in to a separate
account, which overwrites the `auth.json` file. Instance 1 receives a
401 and refreshes its token, but it doesn't write the new token to the
`auth.json` file because the account ID doesn't match. Instance 2 is
later activated and presented with a new task. It immediately hits a 401
and attempts to refresh its token but fails because its cached refresh
token is now invalid. To avoid this situation, I've changed the logic to
immediately fail a token refresh if the user has since logged out or
logged in to another account. This will still be seen as an error by the
user, but the cause will be clearer.
I also took this opportunity to clean up the names of existing functions
to make their roles clearer.
* `try_refresh_token` is renamed `request_chatgpt_token_refresh`
* the existing `refresh_token` is renamed `refresh_token_from_authority`
(there's a new higher-level function named `refresh_token` now)
* `refresh_tokens` is renamed `refresh_and_persist_chatgpt_token`, and
it now implicitly reloads
* `update_tokens` is renamed `persist_tokens`
When using ChatGPT in names of types, we should be consistent, so this
renames some types with `ChatGpt` in the name to `Chatgpt`. From
https://rust-lang.github.io/api-guidelines/naming.html:
> In `UpperCamelCase`, acronyms and contractions of compound words count
as one word: use `Uuid` rather than `UUID`, `Usize` rather than `USize`
or `Stdin` rather than `StdIn`. In `snake_case`, acronyms and
contractions are lower-cased: `is_xid_start`.
This PR updates existing uses of `ChatGpt` and changes them to
`Chatgpt`. Though in all cases where it could affect the wire format, I
visually inspected that we don't change anything there. That said, this
_will_ change the codegen because it will affect the spelling of type
names.
For example, this renames `AuthMode::ChatGPT` to `AuthMode::Chatgpt` in
`app-server-protocol`, but the wire format is still `"chatgpt"`.
This PR also updates a number of types in `codex-rs/core/src/auth.rs`.
This enables a new use case where `codex app-server` is embedded into a
parent application that will directly own the user's ChatGPT auth
lifecycle, which means it owns the user’s auth tokens and refreshes it
when necessary. The parent application would just want a way to pass in
the auth tokens for codex to use directly.
The idea is that we are introducing a new "auth mode" currently only
exposed via app server: **`chatgptAuthTokens`** which consist of the
`id_token` (stores account metadata) and `access_token` (the bearer
token used directly for backend API calls). These auth tokens are only
stored in-memory. This new mode is in addition to the existing `apiKey`
and `chatgpt` auth modes.
This PR reuses the shape of our existing app-server account APIs as much
as possible:
- Update `account/login/start` with a new `chatgptAuthTokens` variant,
which will allow the client to pass in the tokens and have codex
app-server use them directly. Upon success, the server emits
`account/login/completed` and `account/updated` notifications.
- A new server->client request called
`account/chatgptAuthTokens/refresh` which the server can use whenever
the access token previously passed in has expired and it needs a new one
from the parent application.
I leveraged the core 401 retry loop which typically triggers auth token
refreshes automatically, but made it pluggable:
- **chatgpt** mode refreshes internally, as usual.
- **chatgptAuthTokens** mode calls the client via
`account/chatgptAuthTokens/refresh`, the client responds with updated
tokens, codex updates its in-memory auth, then retries. This RPC has a
10s timeout and handles JSON-RPC errors from the client.
Also some additional things:
- chatgpt logins are blocked while external auth is active (have to log
out first. typically clients will pick one OR the other, not support
both)
- `account/logout` clears external auth in memory
- Ensures that if `forced_chatgpt_workspace_id` is set via the user's
config, we respect it in both:
- `account/login/start` with `chatgptAuthTokens` (returns a JSON-RPC
error back to the client)
- `account/chatgptAuthTokens/refresh` (fails the turn, and on next
request app-server will send another `account/chatgptAuthTokens/refresh`
request to the client).
Historically we started with a CodexAuth that knew how to refresh it's
own tokens and then added AuthManager that did a different kind of
refresh (re-reading from disk).
I don't think it makes sense for both `CodexAuth` and `AuthManager` to
be mutable and contain behaviors.
Move all refresh logic into `AuthManager` and keep `CodexAuth` as a data
object.
Currently, when the access token expires, we attempt to use the refresh
token to acquire a new access token. This works most of the time.
However, there are situations where the refresh token is expired,
exhausted (already used to perform a refresh), or revoked. In those
cases, the current logic treats the error as transient and attempts to
retry it repeatedly.
This PR changes the token refresh logic to differentiate between
permanent and transient errors. It also changes callers to treat the
permanent errors as fatal rather than retrying them. And it provides
better error messages to users so they understand how to address the
problem. These error messages should also help us further understand why
we're seeing examples of refresh token exhaustion.
Here is the error message in the CLI. The same text appears within the
extension.
<img width="863" height="38" alt="image"
src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/7ffc0d08-ebf0-4900-b9a9-265064202f4f"
/>
I also correct the spelling of "Re-connecting", which shouldn't have a
hyphen in it.
Testing: I manually tested these code paths by adding temporary code to
programmatically cause my refresh token to be exhausted (by calling the
token refresh endpoint in a tight loop more than 50 times). I then
simulated an access token expiration, which caused the token refresh
logic to be invoked. I confirmed that the updated logic properly handled
the error condition.
Note: We earlier discussed the idea of forcefully logging out the user
at the point where token refresh failed. I made several attempts to do
this, and all of them resulted in a bad UX. It's important to surface
this error to users in a way that explains the problem and tells them
that they need to log in again. We also previously discussed deleting
the auth.json file when this condition is detected. That also creates
problems because it effectively changes the auth status from logged in
to logged out, and this causes odd failures and inconsistent UX. I think
it's therefore better not to delete auth.json in this case. If the user
closes the CLI or VSCE and starts it again, we properly detect that the
access token is expired and the refresh token is "dead", and we force
the user to go through the login flow at that time.
This should address aspects of #6191, #5679, and #5505
