codex-cli-runtime skill should instruct agents to use --prompt-file for shell-safe prompt passing

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Assessment

Difficulty
1/5
Estimated time
Under an hour
Newbie friendliness
78/100
Issue type
Documentation
Clarity
Clearly specified
Activity status
Quiet
Tech stack
javascript
Domain
documentation

Research direction

Read skills/codex-cli-runtime/skill.md and the existing --prompt-file handling in codex-companion.mjs, including readTaskPrompt and readStdinIfPiped. Update the skill instructions to use a temporary prompt file rather than positional prompt arguments, and confirm the documented invocation avoids shell metacharacter expansion.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

Problem

The codex-cli-runtime skill instructs the codex:codex-rescue subagent to pass task prompts as positional arguments:

node "$CODEX_COMPANION" task "<raw arguments>"

When the prompt contains shell metacharacters (backticks, ${}, (), file paths), zsh interprets them before node receives the argument. This causes the Codex task to fail silently.

Observed errors

(eval):1: permission denied: app/services/results/serial_codes/destroy_service.rb
(eval):1: command not found: find_serial_code
(eval):1: no matches found: .record_limit(count)
(eval):1: parse error near `}'
(eval):1: parse error in command substitution

Root cause

The skill definition (skills/codex-cli-runtime/skill.md) only mentions positional argument passing. However, codex-companion.mjs already supports --prompt-file (line 614, readTaskPrompt function) and piped stdin (readStdinIfPiped).

Suggested fix

Update skills/codex-cli-runtime/skill.md to instruct agents to:

  1. Write the prompt to a temp file
  2. Pass it via --prompt-file /path/to/file instead of as a positional argument

This avoids shell metacharacter expansion entirely.

Environment

  • Claude Code 2.1.185
  • codex plugin 1.0.4
  • macOS (zsh)
Dominant language
JavaScript
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