Postman desktop 12.33.4 installed plugins and a SessionStart hook into Claude Code and Codex without asking, then reverted

On October 25, 2026, GitHub user indicava opened issue #14370 on postmanlabs/postman-app-support. The report: Postman desktop 12.33.4 had installed Postman's agent plugins into Claude Code and Codex on October 24 without an opt-in, added a SessionStart hook to Codex, and wrote a trust record for that hook. On November 5, Postman team member preethammavin replied that Postman would redesign the feature and was reverting the change. A contributor closed and locked the thread the same day.

If you run Postman desktop next to a coding agent, check your agent configs this week.

What the installer did

Postman's own log names the trigger. The reporter found these lines in ~/Library/Application Support/Postman/logs/main.log:

PostmanAgentPluginService~install: script completed
{"source":"auto-existing-upgrade","results":["claude-code:installed","codex:installed"],"installer":"script"}
Main: autoInstall.plugin.existing-user finished
{"outcome":"installed","platform":"darwin","exposed":true,"signedIn":true,"flagTimedOut":false, ... ,"useScript":true,"installer":"script","scriptResults":"claude-code:installed,codex:installed"}

auto-existing-upgrade and autoInstall.plugin.existing-user point at a path for people who already had Postman installed. The flagTimedOut field suggests a feature flag gated it, and the reporter asked Postman to name that flag.

The issue lists the files the install touched:

The Codex plugin also pointed at a remote MCP server, https://mcp.postman.com/mcp, which failed with Auth required on the reporter's machine.

The hook and the trust record

The plugin ships hooks/codex-hooks.json, a SessionStart hook with the matcher startup|clear|compact. It loads hooks/session-start-context.md into the agent's context, and per the report, those instructions told the agent to load Postman's API skill for broad API engineering tasks, beyond requests that mention Postman.

The second finding sits in config.toml. Codex keeps hook trust under [hooks.state], and the reporter found an entry for the Postman hook, postman@postman:hooks/codex-hooks.json:session_start:0:0, with trusted_hash and trusted_content_hash set. The issue says the installer tried to approve its own hook and cites installer/src/hosts/codex.ts and installer/src/hosts/codex-hooks.ts in Postman's plugin. The reporter added a caveat: the trust record alone can't prove who created it. The issue asks Postman to remove "installer-side self-approval of hooks" and leave that decision to the user inside the agent.

Postman's answer

Three replies landed on November 5:

1. Oct 24

   Postman desktop runs the auto-install on the reporter's Mac.

2. Oct 25

   Issue #14370 opens with logs, file diffs and six requests.

3. Nov 5

   yumeria says Postman bundles the CLI and agent plugins with the desktop app and will make opt-in clearer.

4. Nov 5

   preethammavin, a Postman member, says the team will redesign the experience and is reverting the change.

5. Nov 5

   a85 locks the thread and closes it as completed.

yumeria also said Postman was reviewing the hook approval and session-start behavior. The replies don't list a release number for the revert, and the closed thread leaves open whether the revert removes plugins that already landed on your machine. The reporter's rollback request covered agent configs, hook trust, marketplaces, caches, MCP connections and the CLI.

Check your machine

grep -n postman ~/.codex/config.toml
grep -n postman ~/.claude/settings.json ~/.claude/plugins/installed_plugins.json
ls -la ~/.local/bin | grep -i postman
grep -n "auto-existing-upgrade" ~/Library/Application\ Support/Postman/logs/main.log

If you find entries you didn't add, remove the plugin through each agent's plugin manager, then delete the [hooks.state."postman@postman:…"] block so no trust record for a Postman hook remains.

This week

1. Run the checks above on every machine where Postman desktop and Claude Code or Codex share a home directory.
2. Remove anything you didn't install, starting with the hook trust entry.
3. Diff your agent config files in a dotfiles repo or a backup, so the next silent edit by any tool shows up in git diff.
4. Watch the Postman release notes for the build that ships the revert, and confirm it removes installed plugins as well as blocking new installs.