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Comment by simonw | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure. Someone who hasn't installed the ChatGPT (or Codex) apps yet could confirm this by installing the apps, seeing if that ~/.cache directory exists, then try running a prompt that needs Python or Node.js or LibreOffice and see if it downloads them when needed.

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I've never installed the ChatGPT app on my Mac until today. I ran the app, signed in, and I see the same.

% ls ~/.cache/codex-runtimes/codex-primary-runtime/dependencies/native/libreoffice-headless

libreoffice manifest.json

On a Windows installation I see this:

    PS C:\Users\user> ls C:\Users\user\.cache\codex-runtimes\codex-primary-runtime\dependencies\native\
    Mode                 LastWriteTime         Length Name
    ----                 -------------         ------ ----
    d-----         8/27/2026  10:09 AM                git
    d-----         6/16/2026   9:18 PM                jxrlib
    d-----         8/26/2026   7:37 PM                libheif
    d-----         6/17/2026   5:32 AM                poppler
    d-----         8/27/2026  10:09 AM                powershell

So doesn't seem bundled with all installs at least.

Is this perhaps because the aim is to read Office documents and there are (maybe, I don't know for sure) default components within Windows that can do that?

Codex always try Libreoffice first on my computer.

I don't think there are.

Even when you have the MS Office suite installed, it doesn't really provide a good interface for LLMs or automation, so AI tools don't really use it.

And libreoffice has some really useful and easy to use tools for document manipulation and creation hiding in the background.

It does provide a pretty good COM interface.

Notably: this did not exist after I installed the app, it existed after I ran the app and there was the long startup screen. Presumably, and I'm not sure I'm interested enough to redo it all and find out, that long startup screen involves the default skills plugins setting up their environment and one of those pulls it as a general app requirement.

I also saw this present after first run on macOS but not Windows.

I have had the Codex/ChatGPT app installed for a few months, and can confirm that there's a 422.9 MB file named LibreOfficeDev.app in the above path.

More notably, I don't use Computer Use or any of the fancy features, just Codex for agentic coding.

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