Is it mainly about how the main/orchestrator agent communicates with its subagents ?
If desired the user can always see what the sub agent is doing in detail ?
Isn't it the same in case of claude as well ?
Codex starts encrypting sub-agent prompts
51–60 of 272 posts
Re: Codex starts encrypting sub-agent prompts
#52[deleted]
Re: Codex starts encrypting sub-agent prompts
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is not misleading, quite literally what's happening is that content the agent sends sub-agents is encrypted in such a way that only OpenAIs backend can decrypt it and actually see the clear-text. Just shared this is another comment that hopefully explains things better: > Sure. "Traditionally", your agent would send a text prompt to the sub-agent, then it goes off doing it's work. In the logs/session data, the cle…
I would change "Codex starts encrypting prompts, uses ciphertext for inference instead" to just "Codex starts encrypting prompts" That is enough. Maybe you could say sub agent prompts. The article can say the rest.
Not everything is encrypted though, session data (even from the sub-agent) remains unencrypted, only select things like the prompt the (main) agent sends the sub-agent is encrypted, rest of communication between the two seems still to be plain-text.
Regardless, I've updated the title from "Codex starts encrypting prompts, uses ciphertext for inference instead" to "Codex starts encrypting sub-agent prompts", hope this makes it clearer for everyone :)
Re: Codex starts encrypting sub-agent prompts
#54HN Title is ( edit: was ) very misleading, it makes it sound like inference is being done directly on ciphertext, which would require homomorphic encryption well advanced of what is known.
Agreed, I immediately thought that homomorphic encryption was at play here or some other kind of computation on ciphertext, given the mention of "inferencing" in the title.
Re: Codex starts encrypting sub-agent prompts
#55[deleted]
Re: Codex starts encrypting sub-agent prompts
#56“Starts”? How’s this not already a TLS connection?
Re: Codex starts encrypting sub-agent prompts
#57[dead]
Re: Codex starts encrypting sub-agent prompts
#58HN Title is ( edit: was ) very misleading, it makes it sound like inference is being done directly on ciphertext, which would require homomorphic encryption well advanced of what is known.
Agreed, I immediately thought that homomorphic encryption was at play here or some other kind of computation on ciphertext, given the mention of "inferencing" in the title.
My bad, fixed now, please do refresh and try with latest updated IE if you still don't see the changes.
Re: Codex starts encrypting sub-agent prompts
#59Is it mainly about how the main/orchestrator agent communicates with its subagents ? If desired the user can always see what the sub agent is doing in detail ? Isn't it the same in case of claude as well ?
> Is it mainly about how the main/orchestrator agent communicates with its subagents ?
Yes
> If desired the user can always see what the sub agent is doing in detail ?
Well, no, that's the problem, you're currently not allowed nor is it even possible, to see the exact prompt the main agent sent the sub agent. This is the problem.
> Isn't it the same in case of claude as well ?
No idea, but if Claude Code makes it so it's impossible to inspect what the sub-agents actually received before they started their work, then I'll say it's similarly impossible to rely on Claude Code if so.
Re: Codex starts encrypting sub-agent prompts
#60No normative opinion on whether this is justified or not, but noting that this is only for parent -> subagent spawns/messages, and only for the `multi_agent_v2` feature (currently experimental / off by default). Notably, subagent output is still in plaintext. EDIT: Title was now clarified. But wanted to expand that this is actually enabled for 5.6 Ultra it appears, which does subagent orchestration more natively in t…
> and only for the `multi_agent_v2` feature (currently experimental / off by default).
Wrong, this is enabled by default for Sol and Terra (not Luna), no way of avoiding this short of patching the client yourself, and that still doesn't make the backend endpoints work, they want the ciphertext that OpenAI creates on their side.
> but noting that this is only for parent -> subagent spawns/messages
This is almost fully correct though, the encryption only seems to be for the initial prompt the main model sends the sub-agent, not all communication and not regarding the state of the sub-agent at all.
So you can inspect what the sub-agent is doing currently, and the output, but you cannot see what the initial prompt the sub-agent got started with.