Update Codex CLI So the Skill Catalog Budgets Itself Instead of Eating Your Window

On a large skill/plugin library, catalog compaction plus pruning to a working subset can reclaim hundreds to low-thousands of tokens per turn; near zero if your catalog was already small. Highly setup-dependent. Advanced 4 min read

Every skill and plugin you install adds a metadata row — name, description, and an absolute host path — that Codex concatenates into context on every turn, whether or not the skill ever fires. As the library grows, that catalog silently eats the model's window on long runs. Codex CLI 0.146.0 (July 29 2026) treats the catalog as a budgeted resource: it compacts host skill paths under metadata pressure and warns when the catalog exceeds its context budget. Update, then heed the warning and tune your loaded set instead of installing every skill wholesale.

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