Best possible solution:

Close this branch in favor of the shipped guarded fallback from #88846, and keep any broader restart/drain repair on the open canonical relay lifecycle issue with fail-closed policy semantics preserved.

Do we have a high-confidence way to reproduce the issue?

Partially: source inspection shows the current fail-closed fallback and the proposed fail-open broadening, but no live stale Codex relay run was executed in this read-only review.

Is this the best way to solve the issue?

No: the broad default no-op path is not the best fix because current main deliberately records no-op only when local PreToolUse work is absent; the safe implementation already shipped through the merged guarded fallback.

Security review:

Security review needs attention: Security review needs attention because the diff broadens a PreToolUse tool-policy fallback from guarded fail-closed to default no-op.

• [high] Unknown PreToolUse state fails open — src/cli/native-hook-relay-cli.ts:290
  Defaulting missing PreToolUse unavailable mode to noop means stale or legacy relay commands can proceed without the current fail-closed block when the relay cannot be reached.
  Confidence: 0.9
• [high] Policy-active relay commands get no-op marker — src/agents/harness/native-hook-relay.ts:452
  Adding the no-op marker for every PreToolUse command means policy-active registrations can fail open if their relay becomes unavailable.
  Confidence: 0.88

AGENTS.md: found and applied where relevant.

What I checked:

• PR diff broadens PreToolUse fallback: The branch emits --pre-tool-use-unavailable noop for every pre_tool_use command and defaults missing PreToolUse unavailable mode to noop in the CLI fallback. (src/agents/harness/native-hook-relay.ts:452, 1d06681bab64)
• Current guarded command marker: Current main only adds the no-op marker when the event is pre_tool_use and nativeHookRelayEventHasLocalWork is false. (src/agents/harness/native-hook-relay.ts:452, f26f45c050cc)
• Current fail-closed unknown fallback: Current main fails closed for unavailable PreToolUse unless the generated command explicitly recorded the noop marker. (src/agents/harness/native-hook-relay.ts:798, f26f45c050cc)
• Current tests cover both modes: The CLI tests assert unavailable PreToolUse denies by default and no-ops only with an explicit no-policy marker. (src/cli/native-hook-relay-cli.test.ts:409, f26f45c050cc)
• Merged canonical fallback: Merged PR fix: preserve no-policy native hook fallback #88846 added the guarded no-policy marker while preserving fail-closed unknown PreToolUse and PermissionRequest behavior. (src/agents/harness/native-hook-relay.ts:452, fb64546d9e6f)
• Release provenance: GitHub compare shows v2026.6.8 is ahead of fb64546 with that commit as merge base, so the guarded fallback is included in the latest release. (fb64546d9e6f)

Likely related people:

• steipete: Authored the merged commit and PR that introduced the guarded no-policy native hook fallback in the same files. (role: recent fallback behavior owner; confidence: high; commits: fb64546d9e6f, 76eb478ac9fe; files: src/agents/harness/native-hook-relay.ts, src/cli/native-hook-relay-cli.ts, extensions/codex/src/app-server/native-hook-relay.ts)
• joshavant: Authored a recent native hook relay lifetime fix touching the same harness, CLI, and Codex app-server relay files. (role: recent adjacent contributor; confidence: medium; commits: 14b1ebd640c6; files: src/agents/harness/native-hook-relay.ts, src/cli/native-hook-relay-cli.ts, extensions/codex/src/app-server/native-hook-relay.ts)
• amknight: Authored the Codex native hook relay restart and generation preservation change adjacent to stale relay behavior. (role: recent adjacent contributor; confidence: medium; commits: 42e9504114f3; files: extensions/codex/src/app-server/native-hook-relay.ts)
• pash-openai: Authored earlier work keeping Codex hook relays live across turns in the relay lifecycle area. (role: native relay lifecycle contributor; confidence: medium; commits: 3b5dab372ac2; files: src/agents/harness/native-hook-relay.ts, src/cli/native-hook-relay-cli.ts, extensions/codex/src/app-server/native-hook-relay.ts)
• vincentkoc: Current line blame for the guarded fallback is carried by a later SDK approval response commit in the shallow checkout. (role: recent area contributor; confidence: medium; commits: a635e979653e; files: src/agents/harness/native-hook-relay.ts, src/cli/native-hook-relay-cli.ts)

Codex review notes: model internal, reasoning high; reviewed against f26f45c050cc; fix evidence: release v2026.6.8, commit fb64546d9e6f.