Windows: browser request-header policy failure persists after restarts; native fallback cannot verify URL

Summary

Reporting at the user's request, based on repeated tool failures observed on 16 September 2026 in Codex desktop on Windows with Google Chrome. Browser automation had worked earlier in the same conversation (13–15 September), but now fails before browser discovery/navigation. The root cause is unknown.

Related reports: #45678, #44112, #44140, #44169. This reproduction also includes the outcome of the supported native Windows Computer Use fallback.

Steps to reproduce

1. Open Chrome and Codex desktop on Windows.
2. Ask the assistant to inspect browser state using mcp__cua_repl.js:

   await cua.getState();
   

3. The call repeatedly fails, typically after about 20–30 seconds.
4. Direct cua.createBrowserTab(...) calls fail with the same policy error before a page can be inspected.

Actual result

Unable to load browser request-header policy. Retry the browser command.

The inventory result is:

{"apps":[],"browsers":[],"errors":["Browsers: Error: Unable to load browser request-header policy. Retry the browser command."]}

The empty lists accompany a discovery error; they do not establish that Chrome is closed. A separate attempt also returned Timed out waiting for Statsig values. This is an observed symptom, not a confirmed root cause.

Recovery attempts

• Repeated the suggested browser command retries.
• User reported restarting both Chrome and Codex; the same failure persisted afterward.
• Reset the CUA JavaScript session and retried discovery; one fresh attempt timed out after 30 seconds and reset the kernel.
• Tested the installed Windows Computer Use skill through its supported @oai/sky runtime. sky.list_apps() successfully returned Chrome and its open window. A subsequent sky.get_window_state(...) stopped Computer Use with:

Computer Use has been stopped for this turn because it could not determine the current browser URL on Windows with enough confidence to enforce policy. Stop your work and send a final message noting why Computer Use ended.

The assistant stopped as instructed. No policy checks were disabled or bypassed.

Expected behavior

Browser discovery should work for an authorized browser task, or report an actionable prerequisite/network/service failure. Repeatedly advising a retry does not recover the workflow in this session.

Environment and scope

• Windows desktop; Google Chrome.
• Exact desktop, browser and extension versions have not been verified and are intentionally not guessed.
• Installed native Computer Use skill path indicates bundle version 26.908.70816; this is not asserted to be the desktop app version.
• The failure occurs before the target page is inspected. We have no evidence of a target-site restriction.
• No credentials, private messages, account identifiers, raw session logs, or user-specific filesystem paths are included.

Please investigate the browser request-header-policy initialization failure and whether the native URL-verification failure is related. No causal relationship between those two errors has been established.

Start by reproducing the failure through the named mcp__cua_repl.js calls, especially cua.getState() and cua.createBrowserTab(...), then compare the supported @oai/sky runtime results. Done means identifying the browser request-header-policy failure or its relationship to Windows URL verification and providing an actionable recovery or prerequisite error.