Codex Desktop: add a Fast / Minimal session profile with explicit capability allowlists

What variant of Codex are you using?

App (Codex Desktop 26.903.614548378 on macOS)

What feature would you like to see?

Add a first-class Fast / Minimal session profile for short, interactive software-development tasks.

The profile should keep Codex's mandatory safety and runtime instructions, but start with optional orchestration and extensions disabled. Before starting a chat, the user should be able to explicitly enable only the capabilities needed for that session or project.

Suggested controls:

• choose which global and project skills are available;
• enable or disable plugins, MCP servers, apps, automations, subagents, goals, and other long-running orchestration features independently;
• save a default profile per project, with a one-session override;
• show the effective capabilities and optional instruction sources that will be loaded before the first model turn;
• keep the current full-featured profile available for long-running work.

A useful acceptance test would be: when Fast / Minimal is selected, no optional skill, plugin, integration, or orchestration facility is loaded or auto-selected unless it is explicitly allowlisted by the user.

Additional information

My everyday workflow is dominated by short feedback loops: preparing a PR, making a focused frontend or backend change, reviewing the result, and correcting it quickly. Long-running autonomous work is useful for some users and tasks, but it is not the default need for this workflow.

Loading capabilities and orchestration behavior that a task will not use adds context overhead, makes behavior less predictable, and increases the time before useful feedback. The current configuration override mechanisms are too cumbersome for routine Desktop use.

This is not a request to bypass safety policy or replace mandatory platform instructions. It is a request to make optional product layers explicit and user-selectable, so Codex Desktop can support both long-running autonomous workflows and fast, tightly controlled engineering loops.

Related: #9799 requests the ability to disable or select a narrow set of skills. This proposal extends that idea into a visible Desktop profile covering the full set of optional capabilities.

The payload names no files or tests; start by tracing Desktop session setup before the first model turn and how optional capabilities are currently selected. Define the profile's per-project default, one-session override, effective-capability display, and allowlist behavior; done means optional capabilities are not loaded unless explicitly enabled while the full-featured profile remains available.