# OpenAI Productizes the Codex Harness as a Billable Session API

Times of AI Desk · 2026-09-10 · Work

[https://timesof.ai/2026/09/openai-agents-api-public-beta](https://timesof.ai/2026/09/openai-agents-api-public-beta)

> OpenAI launched the Agents API public beta with hosted orchestration, long-running sessions, compaction and hosted or BYO sandboxes. Standard token, tool and container charges apply without an extra API fee. Current documentation says zero data retention is unsupported.

**Correction / update, October 14, 2026:** Privacy and residency details are attributed to documentation inspected October 14; removed an unsupported SDK launch-month comparison.

OpenAI is productizing the Codex harness as a billable session API. The current documentation does not offer zero data retention.

**OpenAI** (September 10) published **“Introducing the Agents API.”** Public beta: `client.beta.agents.sessions.create`. OpenAI runs **orchestration, long-running sessions, context compaction, recovery**. Hosted sandboxes or **BYO** (**Blaxel, Cloudflare, Daytona, DigitalOcean, E2B, Modal, Oracle, Runloop, Vercel**). Multi-agent `max_concurrent_subagents`. **No extra API fee** — tokens + tools + container rates. The documentation inspected October 14 specifies **US-only data residency** and **no ZDR**, even with self-hosted sandboxes. Default model examples use **`gpt-6-astra`**.

## Limits

- **ZDR** still missing.
- A self-hosted sandbox does not remove the API’s session-retention requirements.

## Sources

- [OpenAI: Agents API documentation](https://developers.openai.com/api/docs/guides/agents-api/overview)

- [OpenAI: Introducing the Agents API (September 10, 2026)](https://openai.com/index/introducing-the-agents-api/)
- [OpenAI Developer Community announcement](https://community.openai.com/t/introducing-the-agents-api-and-hosted-sandboxes/1396481)