Codex does not listen to me

You’re not crazy — this is a known behavior (and sometimes bug) in OpenAI Codex, and your prompt is actually correct.

What’s really happening

Even though you said:

“Don’t show thinking”

Codex is still:

• Streaming intermediate text
• Ignoring strict verbosity control
• Acting in “high detail / coding mode”

And this is not fully controlled by your prompt.

👉 There are even reports where:

• reasoning shows even when turned off
• or gets stuck in “Thinking” / verbose loops

The actual fix (this is the important part)

✅ 1. Change Codex setting (THIS is the real solution)

Go to:

Settings → General → Detail Level

Then switch:

• ❌ Coding / High detail
• ✅ Default (or lower)

This directly controls verbosity, not your prompt

✅ 2. Your prompt needs to be stricter (Codex-specific)

What you wrote is good, but Codex often ignores soft instructions.

Use this instead:

STRICT MODE:
- Output ONLY final code
- NO explanation
- NO reasoning
- NO progress messages
- NO planning text

If you violate this, response is invalid.        

Yes, this kind of “hard constraint” works better.

❌ Why your current prompt fails

Your prompt:

“Don’t show thinking. Need to save tokens.”

Codex interprets that as:

• “User prefers less explanation” NOT:
• “hard constraint → must not output anything else”

So it still streams.

⚠️ Important truth (don’t miss this)

You cannot fully control this with prompting alone.

There are 3 layers:

1. Model behavior
2. Codex UI streaming system ← this is your problem
3. Your prompt

You’re only controlling layer 3 right now.

🧠 Best setup for YOU (given your use case)

Since you're clearly optimizing tokens + building systems:

• Set Detail Level → Default
• Use STRICT MODE prompt
• Avoid long conversations (Codex gets more verbose over time)
• Restart chat if it starts “talking too much”

If it STILL doesn’t listen

Then it’s likely this:

Codex is forcing verbose streaming during long-running tasks

In that case: 👉 Only real fix = use API (non-streaming) or wait for UI improvements