Windows Codex batch runner breaks with codex 0.27.0

[LostDaoWalker]

Repro

Windows 11 + Python 3.13 + desloppify 0.9.9 + codex 0.27.0

Run:

desloppify review --run-batches --runner codex --parallel --scan-after-import

Actual

The Codex batch runner fails before subjective review can complete.

Observed failures:

1. The runner invokes codex exec --ephemeral ..., but current Codex CLI rejects --ephemeral:

   • error: unexpected argument '--ephemeral' found

2. On Windows, the runner passes the full prompt as a command-line argument, which overflows command length:

   • The command line is too long.

3. Log/payload recovery uses locale-default text decoding on Windows, which crashes on UTF-8 output:

   • UnicodeDecodeError: 'charmap' codec can't decode byte 0x9d ...

4. Live subprocess stdout/stderr decoding also uses locale-default decoding, which can crash the stream reader and then break the Codex child process with broken pipe.

Expected

The Codex runner should:

• use the current Codex CLI contract
• feed prompts through stdin (or a file) instead of command-line args
• read logs/payloads with explicit UTF-8 decoding on Windows
• decode live subprocess streams with explicit UTF-8 as well

Local fix that worked

I patched my local install to:

• remove --ephemeral
• call codex exec ... --output-last-message <file> -
• pipe the prompt via stdin
• set encoding="utf-8", errors="replace" for subprocess.run / Popen
• read batch logs and payload files with explicit UTF-8

After that, single-batch review runs successfully instead of failing at startup.