Tell HN: Codex Is Down [fixed]

65 points | by minimaxir 13 hours ago ago

77 comments

  • theuri 13 hours ago ago

    I'm seeing this locally (on the desktop MacOS app): unexpected status 401 Unauthorized: Incorrect API key provided

    • binsquare 11 hours ago ago

      Good thing they don't promise SLA's.

  • slics 13 hours ago ago

    What happens when your entire day is depended on saas models? Anyone even considers using their locally hosted models in order to finish their work? Do you trust your local models to do any of you outstanding work? Do we even understand the code anymore to manually fix anything?

    • greenowl 13 hours ago ago

      If the excavator breaks down on a job site does the operator get out, grab a shovel, and start digging?

      • piloto_ciego 11 hours ago ago

        To any of the people unsure (because like so many people in tech they've probably never worked with or around an excavator) the answer is, "they do not."

      • Razengan 13 hours ago ago

        Or when it rains, do the farmers keep farming?

      • gchamonlive 12 hours ago ago

        A local model would be akin to a smaller and slower excavator, so yeah, grab the Basterd and grind that dirt.

        No but seriously, local models can't replace them altogether, but in case of a complete outage and imminence of work that can't be postponed like resolving support tickets, then it'll have to make do without more capable models.

    • _alphageek 13 hours ago ago

      I remember the days when Stack Overflow would go down. People would actually start seeing each other's faces in the office kitchen.

    • vineyardmike 13 hours ago ago

      > What happens when your entire day is depended on saas models

      Honestly an outage on a Friday is perfect. Clean up your inbox, get to the small tasks you’ve neglected and go home early.

    • serf 12 hours ago ago

      I was worried somewhat until it become really apparent that small models that run locally can handle 99% of technical computer crap when given a decent tool set harness and net access.

      so, to answer your question more practically, during this outage a luna agent of mine fell back to a local bonsai 2 model hosted on my desktop, and the work still got done just fine, just took longer.

    • KronisLV 13 hours ago ago

      > What happens when your entire day is depended on saas models?

      Grab a different one, unlike GitHub being down, there's far less of a moat and you can swap out Codex for Claude Code pretty easily. Or any other provider and yes including local models, though it depends on how good the ones you can run locally are.

      > Do we even understand the code anymore to manually fix anything?

      Assuming you are not 100% vibe coding, you should! If you are vibe coding, then you should still be able to read the code and understand it regardless. Same with making any changes, it's just code. Whether it's worth your time to do that and work manually or not, that's a different question.

      If I was limited to just one cloud provider, I'd just take a few hours off and have a beverage or take a nap. Or if working in office, find other busywork.

    • solarkraft 13 hours ago ago

      Same plan as for a power outage: Go outside (hacker news), chat with your neighbors and wait.

    • furyofantares 13 hours ago ago

      Do something else that day?

    • undefined 13 hours ago ago
      [deleted]
    • undefined 13 hours ago ago
      [deleted]
  • mNovak 13 hours ago ago

    Appears to be back online.

  • killingtime74 13 hours ago ago

    I thought I got banned.

    • ynac 13 hours ago ago

      Cool - what were you working on!

      • killingtime74 13 hours ago ago

        Just a 3D render of a rocket. So I thought it was safe.

        • copperx 13 hours ago ago

          China rocket? You are.

          • killingtime74 13 hours ago ago

            Hehe. Next. Now just the falcon 9

      • ssl-3 13 hours ago ago

        Waiting for a pizza.

        You?

        • ynac 12 hours ago ago

          Leveraging the Ai for a Denon telnet / HTTP integration to help guests watch a DVD or the radio without my help : )

        • Razengan 13 hours ago ago

          Watching the trailer for Megaton Rainfall on repeat and vibing out to the sick OST: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XecKu1_O54U

  • esikich 13 hours ago ago

    I don't know if related, but a half hour before it fully went down, it was flagging all of my requests as security violations which was bizarre.

  • programmertote 13 hours ago ago

    This outage is not just Codex, right? I am just using GTP-6 Astra for some administrative prompts and it has been returning, "Error in message stream", for several minutes now.

  • sscaryterry 13 hours ago ago

    Friday afternoon in the US I guess, perfect time for things to go wrong.

    • edoceo 13 hours ago ago

      Excellent work all around, take the rest of the week off.

    • killingtime74 13 hours ago ago

      Looks like someone at OpenAI did a Friday afternoon deployment lol

  • woodruffw 13 hours ago ago

    It's on the status page: https://status.openai.com

  • jimmydorry 13 hours ago ago

    This outage started a lot longer than 13mins ago. At least now I have an excuse to leave the office and have a long coffee break.

  • preommr 13 hours ago ago

    They are not having a good week.

    I am not even excited about the expected reset because the model quality has been less than stellar.

    • OutOfHere 13 hours ago ago

      They've been lying to everyone's face about GPT-6, considering GPT-6-Sol is markedly worse than GPT-5.6-Sol. It is a complete scam.

      It is documented by numerous users of r/codex and other subreddits, also it is what I see when working with it.

      • isaachinman 12 hours ago ago

        Do you have proof of this?

        • OutOfHere 8 hours ago ago

          It comes from my objective experience and from that of dozens of users reporting it on Reddit. It's easy to dismiss one person but when dozens are reporting it, there could be something to it.

          Could it still be a mass hallucination? It's possible but unlikely.

          It also is no surprise that 6-Sol costs as much as 5.6-Terra. Is this mere coincidence or meant to reflect a certain computational cost? I fear the latter.

          In any event, third party benchmarks (not conveyed by OpenaAI) should help. We know the joke of how OpenAI distorts the Y axis in plots to misrepresent model performance, although in this case the reality is likely worse.

  • jacobgold 13 hours ago ago

    Testing something, can you guys post useless replies like "cool man" or "...okay?"

  • cgio 13 hours ago ago

    These NS agents could have been dedicated to better platform resilience I guess.

  • amannm 13 hours ago ago

    ugh I thought it was just me, ended up reinstalling everything from scratch

    • grim_io 13 hours ago ago

      ChatGPT is not working... Better nuke the OS.

    • OutOfHere 13 hours ago ago

      Next time, wait for five to ten minutes and check r/codex.

    • theuri 13 hours ago ago

      same!

  • fetus8 13 hours ago ago

    was thinking there was something going on with my local network and realized I should look at HN...thank god it's not just me.

  • Aboutplants 13 hours ago ago

    They getting ready to release a new model?

  • spicyusername 13 hours ago ago

    What... am I supposed to code by hand!?

    • embedding-shape 13 hours ago ago

      No, outages is when you start experimenting with local models and catch up what's new since last outage. If you're a power user, you end up getting to play with local models every week!

  • nealmueller 12 hours ago ago

    Codex is back

  • treefry 13 hours ago ago

    Nevermind. Switching to Opus 5.5.

  • pavelmelnichuk 13 hours ago ago

    thank god I'm not the only one, pulling my hair out hitting ctrl+z ... Happy Friday I guess

  • nezhar 13 hours ago ago

    A good time for reading

    • dang 13 hours ago ago

      Or switching to Claude

      • prtmnth 13 hours ago ago

        I switched to Claude. Opus 5.5 was causing fomo anyway. This was the trigger. I admit I have zero loyalty

      • dingnuts 13 hours ago ago

        [dead]

  • OutOfHere 8 hours ago ago

    It doesn't help that the error message was entirely incorrect, not an accurate reflection of the problem. In reality the user wasn't using any API key whatsoever.

  • cmrdporcupine 13 hours ago ago

    ChatGPT also seems down for me.

    • OutOfHere 13 hours ago ago

      It has been down in Work mode, not in Chat mode.

  • ajconway 13 hours ago ago

    It's crazy how fast these things became load-bearing

  • elisbce 13 hours ago ago

    Somebody really wanted to cross one off the weekly TODO list :)

  • esafak 13 hours ago ago

    Don't deploy to production after noon on Friday!

  • rvz 13 hours ago ago

    Codex took an unannounced early day off for the weekend. It happens.

  • statenjason 13 hours ago ago

    It’s my sign to touch grass.

  • guluarte 13 hours ago ago

    unrelated but also chatgpt is super buggy, try generating an image, click stop, now wong be able to send another message until you reload, this issue has been there for months

  • Razengan 13 hours ago ago

    inb4 Aeon

  • russellbeattie 13 hours ago ago

    I amusingly was doing a "cleanup" of my various harnesses when this happened. Claude Code has a /doctor command which was actually quite helpful, so I decided to swap over to Codex and ask it to do a self-analysis and give me some recommendations if there's something I need to clean up. The response was a connection issue. And so was the next. And the next.

    Took me the past 20 minutes to finally check for a status page and realize I hadn't broken something. Not before I created a new project, checked the settings to see my usage numbers, closed and opened the desktop app a couple times, logged out and logged in, used my phone to see if it was a general ChatGPT outage, and generally messing around trying to figure out what I had done.

    I mean, you never know... it could have been my prompt that took the whole service down. (Sorry if it was).

  • mahi1224 2 hours ago ago

    [flagged]

  • decremental 12 hours ago ago

    [dead]

  • OutOfHere 13 hours ago ago

    It easily took over 15 minutes of it being down for it to even register on the status page. The status page showed fake green for this long. This is as verified by myself and by many users on Reddit r/codex who have timed posts and comments. It is a scam.

    If Reddit is more useful than a status page, then what good is a status page? A lie is a lie. 15 minutes can cause someone to reinstall their entire software stack as is documented on this page. For the sites I administer, I have immediate reporting, and I have never had a false alert.

    • esikich 12 hours ago ago

      Sounds like you've never worked in Ops. Having immediate triggers for outages will absolutely flood you with useless alerts. 15 minutes is pretty normal before alerting as there are a zillion unsolvable intermittent issues (and non issues) that can cause a loss of connection to things.

  • dingdong2026 13 hours ago ago

    At last someone ffin noticed! I've observed it for at least an hour before the announcement.

    So much for status reporting from openai. Must have been vibe coded.