Codex Desktop spawns one MCP process set per thread: 353 processes, ~9.6 GiB in 19h
Edward4226 · ghdev · 2026-10-12
openai/codex issue #53285: on Windows, Codex Desktop (26.1007.21434, codex-cli 0.162.0-alpha.17.2) keeps one complete stdio MCP process set alive per thread under a single long-lived app-server, accumulating faster than it reclaims.
- With 6 stdio MCP servers configured, npx/uvx wrappers add 4-5 processes each, so one set is roughly 14 processes
- Peak observation: one app-server up 19h reached 13 sets / 353 processes / 9.6 GiB working set, with reclamation lagging creation
- Contribution 1: a cheap exact way to map each MCP set to its owning thread via per-thread zero-byte lock files in %USERPROFILE%\.codex\thread-writer-locks\
- Contribution 2: fresh numbers on set creation vs reclamation and the per-set cost of npx/uvx-based servers
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