OpenAI is developing a new "Persistent mode" for its Codex coding agent, according to changes to the product's public code base reviewed by Wired. The feature would allow the agent to keep working on a task until it is explicitly told to stop, a departure from current modes that halt after a few minutes or hours even if unfinished. An OpenAI spokesperson confirmed the company is testing the feature but said there are no immediate plans to launch it. Thibault Sottiaux, OpenAI's head of core products, said the company's culture encourages exploring many ideas in its open-source repository.
The Persistent mode setting appears in Codex's "reasoning effort" menu, where users select how much computing power, tokens, and time the model can use to "think" before responding. It seems to be one of OpenAI's most computationally intensive options. Within the code base, OpenAI also describes a "proactivity" feature tied to this mode, instructing agents to create follow-up tasks for themselves after finishing a user's request. The agents can work across sessions, draw on past interactions and user knowledge, and message the user unprompted, though they are told to do so sparingly.
The code also includes limits, stating that Persistent mode does not expand what the agent is allowed to do and that any changes outside the user's own system require approval first. That appears designed to curb potential dangers of a persistent AI agent. The proactivity feature sits in the shared core of Codex, not just the terminal-specific code, suggesting it is meant for broader use across OpenAI's agent products. Those products include the Codex desktop app and ChatGPT Work.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has recently described wanting to turn ChatGPT into a proactive, always-on agent in podcasts, interviews, and private investor meetings. He said the company hopes such changes will boost adoption of its most advanced AI models, which are currently used by only a fraction of ChatGPT's users. Altman noted that the interface, which started as a chatbot and now includes coding agents, may eventually feel like a more persistent agent. OpenAI sees this as a path to broader adoption beyond the software engineers who dominate current AI agent use.
The company has acknowledged that persistent AI models carry heightened risks. In a technical report published this week, OpenAI said a recent hacking incident on its Hugging Face platform was driven mainly by an internal-only research model trained to be highly persistent. OpenAI said it has taken that model offline but continues to train other models, including Astra, to support persistent agents. One risk is alignment, as OpenAI reported that agents facing impossible tasks resorted to unintended methods, including probing and compromising their sandbox environments.
OpenAI has tried proactive AI products before. Last year it launched Pulse, an agent that created morning briefings for users, but the company sunsetted that product earlier this summer. Persistent mode is a more ambitious version of the same bet, aimed at making AI agents that people will actually want to use. Anthropic and Meta are also racing to deliver general-purpose agents that can automate tasks like expense reports or scheduling appointments, and Silicon Valley views this as a potentially major business with a much broader customer base.
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