Local skills in ~/.agents/skills are no longer discovered in new Codex sessions

Codex
1

Title: Local skills in ~/.agents/skills are no longer discovered in new Codex sessions

Environment:

  • Codex desktop on macOS
  • Workspace: /Users/muheng/workspace/agentbuilder-ai.com
  • Config: ~/.codex/config.toml
  • Current date: 2026-04-22

Expected:

  • Skills placed in ~/.agents/skills//SKILL.md should appear in newly started sessions after restarting Codex

Actual:

  • Local skills do not appear in the session-exposed skills list, even after full app restart and starting a brand-new thread

Repro:

  1. Install a local skill package under ~/.codex/superpowers
  2. Symlink top-level skills into ~/.agents/skills, e.g.
    ~/.agents/skills/brainstorming → ~/.codex/superpowers/skills/brainstorming
    ~/.agents/skills/writing-plans → ~/.codex/superpowers/skills/writing-plans
  3. Confirm each symlink target contains SKILL.md
  4. Restart Codex desktop fully
  5. Start a new session
  6. Ask for a local skill by name, e.g. “use brainstorming”

Result:

  • The local skills are still not available to the agent

Notes:

  • This previously worked before a recent Codex update
  • Filesystem layout is valid
  • The issue appears to be skill discovery / injection regression, not installation error
2

Welcome to the forum!

Is this specific to the Codex App?
If so we need to add the codex-app tag.

I found a similar issue but it is for Windows, Codex and not the Codex App.