[Bug] Windows Desktop app fails to start after update to v26.820.60940 ("Unable to locate Codex CLI" & spawn EINVAL on .cmd wrapper)

What version of the Codex App are you using (From “About Codex” dialog)?

26.820.60940

What subscription do you have?

ChatGPT Plus

What platform is your computer?

Windows 11 (x64)

What issue are you seeing?

After updating the Codex desktop app to version 26.820.60940, the application fails to launch on startup, reporting two sequential errors:

Initial launch failure:

Unable to locate the Codex CLI binary. Set CODEX_CLI_PATH or ensure the Electron resources include bin/codex.
The desktop client fails to locate its bundled internal binary in the Electron resources/bin directory.

Secondary failure when specifying wrapper script:
When setting CODEX_CLI_PATH to the standard global npm command (codex.cmd), the app fails immediately with:

spawn EINVAL
This occurs because Electron's child_process.spawn() attempts to execute the .cmd wrapper directly without { shell: true }.

What steps can reproduce the bug?

Update Codex desktop to version 26.820.60940 on Windows 11.

Launch the application.

Observe the initial error: Unable to locate the Codex CLI binary.

Set the user environment variable CODEX_CLI_PATH to ...\nodejs\codex.cmd.

Relaunch the application.

Observe the secondary error: spawn EINVAL.

Workaround
Manually pointing CODEX_CLI_PATH directly to the underlying native executable binary bypasses both errors and successfully launches the application:

What is the expected behavior?

No response

Additional information

CODEX_CLI_PATH = <npm_root>\node_modules@openai\codex\node_modules@openai\codex-win32-x64\vendor\x86_64-pc-windows-msvc\bin\codex.exe
Suggested Fixes
Ensure the Electron installer/updater bundles and extracts the native codex.exe binary into resources/bin/ by default.

If falling back to system PATH or CODEX_CLI_PATH on Windows, resolve .cmd/.bat wrappers appropriately or use { shell: true } when spawning batch files to prevent spawn EINVAL.

Start by inspecting how the Electron app locates resources/bin/codex and how CODEX_CLI_PATH is passed to child_process.spawn on Windows. Reproduce the update and launch flow on Windows 11, including a codex.cmd path; done means the bundled codex.exe is found by default and .cmd wrappers no longer produce spawn EINVAL.