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What these traps have in common: the thing blocking you isn’t a bug in your code, it’s some protection that was on by default.
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Codex’s sandbox
I was on site at a client’s office running a Codex training, and the company’s internal NAS mount just would not read. After every check had failed and I was getting desperate, it hit me: is the Codex sandbox doing this? Sure enough, once I verbally authorized it to try outside the sandbox, it read fine.
Turn on ENV_SCRUB and AUTOMODE won’t come back
Trivia: if CLAUDE_CODE_SUBPROCESS_ENV_SCRUB=1 (the env-stripping setting is on), AUTOMODE can’t become the default. The default will be manual.
Vercel throwaway public pages
A fresh project’s deploy URL ships with Deployment Protection (Vercel Authentication) on by default, so outside visitors get a 401. The other trap: the bare <proj>.vercel.app alias may be someone else’s empty shell; your auto-updating prod alias is <proj>-<team>.vercel.app. curl and check the content before sending anyone the link.
The cloud only accepts official connectors
Several of my clients were stuck wanting a cloud schedule that mails them a daily market brief or writes to a Google Sheet. Cloud servers only accept the official connector, and until now the most you could do was save a draft or create a brand-new file in Drive. The official MCP now sends mail and updates existing files.