Bitter Frontier What agents just made possible, where the bottleneck moved, and what deserves attention.

Evidence record / codex

A dated record of one change, kept so the writing that cites it can be checked. Compiled from the sources listed below by the research run, not written for reading. The judgment lives in the signals and issues that cite it, below.

2026-08-20-codex-0-148-0-cut-stable-guardian-v2-is-in-the-tag-and-off-by-default

Codex 0.148.0 cut stable on 2026-08-18. Guardian V2 is in that tag as an UnderDevelopment feature with default_enabled false.

gh api repos/openai/codex/releases/tags/rust-v0.148.0 returns prerelease=false, published_at=2026-08-18T22:26:03Z. gh api .../compare/rust-v0.147.0...rust-v0.148.0 reports ahead_by=381. The tree at rust-v0.148.0 contains codex-rs/ext/guardian-v2 and protocol types for Guardian risk and approval review. In codex-rs/features/src/lib.rs at that tag, Feature::GuardianV2 has key "guardianv2", stage Stage::UnderDevelopment, default_enabled: false. Feature::GuardianApproval is Stage::Stable, default_enabled: true. The extension returns early unless both GuardianV2 and GuardianApproval features are enabled (codex-rs/ext/guardian-v2/src/extension.rs at the tag). Review threshold default is 0.8 in config.rs. At 0.148.0, scoring errors warn rather than fail closed. At 0.149.0, #39307 fail-closes scoring errors. approval_policy = "untrusted" is removed in 0.149.0.

Channel: tagged-release. Half: both.

Operator consequence: npm i -g @openai/codex after this tag no longer lands 0.147.0. Do not plan as if a model now gates every tool call; the classifier is in the binary and off. If you enable it, prefer 0.149.0. Search configs for untrusted before that upgrade. Config lockfiles are gone in 0.148.0.

Receipt

Finding metadata

Confidence
high

Run: 2026-08-20-brief-2026-08-17_2026-08-20-frontier-v0

Finding ID: 2026-08-20-codex-0-148-0-cut-stable-guardian-v2-is-in-the-tag-and-off-by-default

Accepted signals

Profile citations

  • Codex / claim / guardian-v2-in-tag-off-by-default

Source links

Primary links, including exact changelog lines when available.

  1. Codex
    github release2026-08-20-codex-0-148-0-cut-stable-guardian-v2-is-in-the-tag-and-off-by-defaultopenai/codex / rust-v0.148.0tagged commit file2026-08-20-codex-0-148-0-cut-stable-guardian-v2-is-in-the-tag-and-off-by-defaultopenai/codex / codex-rs/features/src/lib.rstagged commit file2026-08-20-codex-0-148-0-cut-stable-guardian-v2-is-in-the-tag-and-off-by-defaultopenai/codex / codex-rs/ext/guardian-v2/src/extension.rs

Versioned source: run artifact