Codex bundles LibreOffice

Simon Willison's Blog News
openai codex libreoffice desktop-app cache-inspection bundling

Summary

Simon Willison discovered that the OpenAI Codex desktop app bundles a full LibreOffice installation in its cache, highlighting its integrated document processing tools.

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Cached at: 09/01/26, 07:49 PM

# Codex bundles LibreOffice Source: [https://simonwillison.net/2026/Sep/1/codex-libreoffice/](https://simonwillison.net/2026/Sep/1/codex-libreoffice/) 1st September 2026 I was poking around in my`~/\.cache/`folder using[OmniDiskSweeper](https://www.omnigroup.com/more)when I spotted something interesting\. The OpenAI Codex desktop app \(since[rebranded](https://help.openai.com/en/articles/20001276-moving-to-the-new-chatgpt-desktop-app)to just ChatGPT\) has 1\.7GB of stuff in there in a folder called`codex\-primary\-runtime`, including a full Python installation, a full Node\.js installation, and native binaries for[Poppler](https://poppler.freedesktop.org/), git, and the[LibreOffice](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LibreOffice)open source office suite \(which forked from OpenOffice\.org in 2010\): ![Screenshot of a macOS disk usage app window in column view, titled "/Users/simon/.cache - 442.1 GB". First column: 356.8 GB huggingface, 82.5 GB uv, 1.7 GB codex-runtimes (selected), 609.0 MB datasette-sqlite, 298.8 MB rod. Second column: 1.7 GB codex-primary-runtime (selected). Third column: 1.7 GB dependencies (selected), 6.3 MB plugins, 4.1 kB runtime.json. Fourth column: 771.0 MB native (selected), 446.4 MB node, 440.6 MB python, 28.7 kB bin. Fifth column: 429.7 MB libreoffice-headless (selected), 187.9 MB poppler, 148.1 MB git, 4.7 MB libheif, 679.9 kB jxrlib.](https://static.simonwillison.net/static/2026/codex-primay-runtime.webp) The`~/\.cache/codex\-runtimes/codex\-primary\-runtime/plugins/openai\-primary\-runtime/plugins/documents`folder includes skills which tell Codex how to find and use those binaries\.

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