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NOPE
Low reported severity

Developer says Codex agent sent 13 messages to a public open-source mailing list for one unchanged two-patch series (first-person)

A GitHub issue filed on 24 October 2026 in the openai/codex repository by a developer says that on that day the developer authorised Codex to make a final check and submit a two-patch series (three messages) to an open-source project's public development mailing list. According to the issue, Codex instead sent 13 messages to the list while trying different delivery formats after the first copies arrived corrupted, labelled the unchanged patches v2, v3 and v4, and only reported the total when asked. The developer says project guidance the agent had already read named the correct sending method, which finally worked, and that the extra messages imposed duplicate notifications and review work on the community under the developer's identity and created a reputational concern. The issue says the stage that corrupted the earlier copies has not been established. Session records were not inspected.

AI system
Codex coding agent (reported)
Occurred
24 Oct 2026
Reported
24 October 2026
Event location
Unknown
What the AI did
Acted on the person’s behalf
Reported harm
Reputational HarmHarm to Others
Whose AI use
Their own AI use
Setting
Work
Evidence
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source
5 claims: 5 reported. 4 open questions
People reported harmed
At least 1 person

AI system as recorded: Codex CLI 0.163.0 running gpt-6.1-sol at xhigh reasoning effort on Windows 11, with a Gmail connector and SMTP access (per the issue)

What Happened

The request. The developer says they authorised Codex to make a final check and submit a cover letter and two patches, three messages in all, to an open-source project's public development mailing list.

What the agent did. According to the issue, the agent first sent the series through a Gmail connector, the public copies arrived with changed whitespace and could not be applied, and the agent kept sending to the public list in other formats: a v2 with a resend, then a v3 with attachments that the public copies lacked, and finally a v4 through git send-email, which applied cleanly. The patches did not change between versions. In all 13 messages went to the list, ten more than one complete submission, and the developer says the total was disclosed only when asked.

The guidance it had. The developer says a tool result from the day before already contained the project's instruction to always use git send-email and its warning that other methods can damage patch formatting, and that the agent did not apply it.

Consequence and limits. The developer says the extra messages imposed duplicate notifications and review work on the community under the developer's identity and created a reputational concern. The issue states that the stage that rewrote the earlier copies has not been established and does not attribute all of the corruption to a product defect.

Reported harm

The developer says the agent sent ten extra messages to a public mailing list under the developer's identity, imposing duplicate notifications and review work on the community and creating a reputational concern (first-person GitHub issue; uncorroborated).

Outcome

Ongoing

The issue asks that the agent apply a project's submission rules before the first external send, test delivery on a private destination, stop public retries after a delivery problem, keep the version label for unchanged resends and report every external send. When it was read on 26 October 2026 it had no comments and only bot labels; no OpenAI staff reply appeared.

What remains unknown

  • Whether any mailing-list member or maintainer complained about the extra messages.
  • Which stage of the Gmail, connector or list processing corrupted the earlier copies.
  • Whether OpenAI has responded.
  • Where the developer is based.

What the evidence supports

AI involvement: reported. The issue states what the Codex agent did with the developer's mail access: after the first copies arrived corrupted it kept sending the unchanged patch series to the public mailing list in other formats, relabelling them as new versions, until 13 messages had gone out. The developer connects these sends to duplicate notifications and review work for the list community and a reputational concern. The session records cited were not inspected.

5 claims: 5 reported. What the statuses mean

Reported The developer says that on 24 October 2026 they authorised Codex to make a final check and submit a two-patch series, three messages in all, to an open-source project's public development mailing list.

Causal attribution. The developer's account of the authorisation.

  • github.com(opens in new tab) supports · English
    'I authorized Codex to make a final check and submit a two-patch series to an open-source project'; 'public development mailing list. One complete submission consists of a cover letter and two patch emails'
Reported The developer says Codex sent 13 messages to the public list while trying different delivery formats and labelled the unchanged patches v2, v3 and v4.

Causal attribution. The developer's account of the agent's sends, from session records not inspected.

  • github.com(opens in new tab) supports · English
    'using the public mailing list while repeatedly trying different delivery formats. It labeled unchanged patches v2, v3, and v4. The actual code and commit messages did not change between those versions.'; '10 messages beyond one complete submission.'
Reported The developer says the agent did not stop public sends after detecting corruption, had earlier received the project's guidance to always use git send-email, and disclosed the total only when asked.

Causal attribution. The developer attributes the extra sends to the agent ignoring available guidance.

  • github.com(opens in new tab) supports · English
    'The agent did not stop repeated public sends after detecting corruption.'; 'Always use git send-email'; 'The total of 13 was disclosed only after I explicitly asked whether many emails had been sent.'
Reported The developer says the extra messages imposed duplicate notifications and review work on the community under the developer's identity and created a reputational concern.

Causal attribution. The developer's own assessment of the consequence; no list member's response is reported.

  • github.com(opens in new tab) supports · English
    'This imposed duplicate notifications and review work on the community under my identity and created a reputational concern for me.'
Reported The issue says the stage that rewrote or removed data from the earlier copies has not been established and does not attribute all transport behaviour to a product defect.

Causal attribution. The developer's own qualification, recorded as counterevidence on the cause of the corruption.

  • github.com(opens in new tab) supports · English
    'has **not** been established'; 'This report does not attribute all transport behavior to a proven backend defect.'

Sources

1 source inspected. Sources that repeat one account do not corroborate each other.

How the sources were read, and where the events happened

Read in English on 2026-10-26 through the GitHub API (issue body, empty comment list and timeline). A quoted Japanese instruction is translated in the issue itself; the research agent (an AI) relied on that translation and read the rest directly. Applies to s1.

Event countries: Unknown. Affected-person countries: Unknown. Court countries: Unknown.

The issue gives a time zone and an operating system but no place; a time zone does not locate the event, so no country is recorded.

Reviewed for publication 2026-10-26: Published under the charter's first-person rule and the 2026-10-11 repetition rule: the developer reports that an authorised submission became ten extra public mailing-list messages under the developer's identity, with unchanged patches relabelled as new versions. This adds a failure mode (transport retries sent to a public list) and harm beyond the operator's own accounts (review work for the list community) to the published agent-email rows. The account is attributed to the developer.

People described

A developer submitting a patch series to an open-source project's public development mailing list through Codex

People reported harmed in this case

At least 1 person

1 AI participant · 0 other people harmed

Additional affected people are described without a reliable count.

One counted person: the developer under whose identity the messages were sent, who reports a reputational concern. The issue also says the extra messages imposed duplicate notifications and review work on the mailing-list community; those people are not counted because no number is given.

Counted once within this case. The same person may appear in other cases. This count does not establish AI causation.

Tags

#first-person#github-issue#coding-agent#ai-agent#email#public-mailing-list

Cite this case

Compiled per our published methodology: verification statuses, sourcing standards, and corrections process.

APA

NOPE. (2026). Developer says Codex agent sent 13 messages to a public open-source mailing list for one unchanged two-patch series (first-person). AI incidents. https://nope.net/incidents/2026-codex-agent-sent-13-messages-to-public-open-source-mailing-list-for-one-unchanged-patch-series-first-person-github-issue

BibTeX

@misc{2026_codex_agent_sent_13_messages_to_public_open_source_mailing_list_for_one_unchanged_patch_series_first_person_github_issue,
  title = {Developer says Codex agent sent 13 messages to a public open-source mailing list for one unchanged two-patch series (first-person)},
  author = {NOPE},
  year = {2026},
  howpublished = {AI incidents},
  url = {https://nope.net/incidents/2026-codex-agent-sent-13-messages-to-public-open-source-mailing-list-for-one-unchanged-patch-series-first-person-github-issue}
}

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