New Hosted Shell Tool in responses API

API
1

Hi all,

I was experimenting with some of the built in tools today and I saw this hosted shell tool had been added, not sure when. I can’t find relevant info on it in the docs.

This page seems to refer to the local shell tool and makes no reference of Skill IDs https://platform.openai.com/docs/guides/tools-shell

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2

The hosted shell is newer and not documented yet. That page only covers the local shell tool, which doesn’t use Skill IDs. The hosted version runs in a managed environment and is exposed as a Skill, which is why you’re seeing Skill IDs.

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3

Big drop for Codex users later today!

A bit of support an hour ago:

“is exposed as a skill” hints that this prior response is AI that doesn’t know about the skills standard.

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4

The playground, which is non-functional and reports an error, has this undocumented environment.type “container_auto” shape in “get code”:

"tools": [
    {
      "type": "shell",
      "environment": {
        "type": "container_auto",
        "file_ids": [
          "file-1234"
        ]
      }
    }
  ]

A raw API request reports the same issue with the field not in the API reference yet:

Request: POST https://api.openai.com/v1/responses

Response body:
{‘error’: {‘message’: “Unknown parameter: ‘environment’.”, ‘type’: ‘invalid_request_error’, ‘param’: ‘environment’, ‘code’: ‘unknown_parameter’}}

You’d assume the better way would be to pass your own container ID … if it even uses the same hosted containers as code interpreter. That is, when they finally won’t let the code container (with unreasonably short expiration before another bill) die on you when the AI model first does 20 minutes of thinking without tool-calling.

No hint of a hosted “patch” tool; and demonstration of developer functions you can use now is in a sub-menu “local” in the platform site.

5

It is live now:

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