b093565bfb
> large behavior change to how the TUI owns its viewport, history, and suspend behavior. > Core model is in place; a few items are still being polished before this is ready to merge. We've moved this over to a new tui2 crate from being directly on the tui crate. To enable use --enable tui2 (or the equivalent in your config.toml). See https://developers.openai.com/codex/local-config#feature-flags Note that this serves as a baseline for the changes that we're making to be applied rapidly. Tui2 may not track later changes in the main tui. It's experimental and may not be where we land on things. --- ## Summary This PR moves the Codex TUI off of “cooperating” with the terminal’s scrollback and onto a model where the in‑memory transcript is the single source of truth. The TUI now owns scrolling, selection, copy, and suspend/exit printing based on that transcript, and only writes to terminal scrollback in append‑only fashion on suspend/exit. It also fixes streaming wrapping so streamed responses reflow with the viewport, and introduces configuration to control whether we print history on suspend or only on exit. High‑level goals: - Ensure history is complete, ordered, and never silently dropped. - Print each logical history cell at most once into scrollback, even with resizes and suspends. - Make scrolling, selection, and copy match the visible transcript, not the terminal’s notion of scrollback. - Keep suspend/alt‑screen behavior predictable across terminals. --- ## Core Design Changes ### Transcript & viewport ownership - Treat the transcript as a list of **cells** (user prompts, agent messages, system/info rows, streaming segments). - On each frame: - Compute a **transcript region** as “full terminal frame minus the bottom input area”. - Flatten all cells into visual lines plus metadata (which cell + which line within that cell). - Use scroll state to choose which visual line is at the top of the region. - Clear that region and draw just the visible slice of lines. - The terminal’s scrollback is no longer part of the live layout algorithm; it is only ever written to when we decide to print history. ### User message styling - User prompts now render as clear blocks with: - A blank padding line above and below. - A full‑width background for every line in the block (including the prompt line itself). - The same block styling is used when we print history into scrollback, so the transcript looks consistent whether you are in the TUI or scrolling back after exit/suspend. --- ## Scrolling, Mouse, Selection, and Copy ### Scrolling - Scrolling is defined in terms of the flattened transcript lines: - Mouse wheel scrolls up/down by fixed line increments. - PgUp/PgDn/Home/End operate on the same scroll model. - The footer shows: - Whether you are “following live output” vs “scrolled up”. - Current scroll position (line / total). - When there is no history yet, the bottom pane is **pegged high** and gradually moves down as the transcript fills, matching the existing UX. ### Selection - Click‑and‑drag defines a **linear selection** over transcript line/column coordinates, not raw screen rows. - Selection is **content‑anchored**: - When you scroll, the selection moves with the underlying lines instead of sticking to a fixed Y position. - This holds both when scrolling manually and when new content streams in, as long as you are in “follow” mode. - The selection only covers the “transcript text” area: - Left gutter/prefix (bullets, markers) is intentionally excluded. - This keeps copy/paste cleaner and avoids including structural margin characters. ### Copy (`Ctrl+Y`) - Introduce a small clipboard abstraction (`ClipboardManager`‑style) and use a cross‑platform clipboard crate under the hood. - When `Ctrl+Y` is pressed and a non‑empty selection exists: - Re‑render the transcript region off‑screen using the same wrapping as the visible viewport. - Walk the selected line/column range over that buffer to reconstruct the exact text: - Includes spaces between words. - Preserves empty lines within the selection. - Send the resulting text to the system clipboard. - Show a short status message in the footer indicating success/failure. - Copy is **best‑effort**: - Clipboard failures (headless environment, sandbox, remote sessions) are handled gracefully via status messages; they do not crash the TUI. - Copy does *not* insert a new history entry; it only affects the status bar. --- ## Streaming and Wrapping ### Previous behavior Previously, streamed markdown: - Was wrapped at a fixed width **at commit time** inside the streaming collector. - Those wrapped `Line<'static>` values were then wrapped again at display time. - As a result, streamed paragraphs could not “un‑wrap” when the terminal width increased; they were permanently split according to the width at the start of the stream. ### New behavior This PR implements the first step from `codex-rs/tui/streaming_wrapping_design.md`: - Streaming collector is constructed **without** a fixed width for wrapping. - It still: - Buffers the full markdown source for the current stream. - Commits only at newline boundaries. - Emits logical lines as new content becomes available. - Agent message cells now wrap streamed content only at **display time**, based on the current viewport width, just like non‑streaming messages. - Consequences: - Streamed responses reflow correctly when the terminal is resized. - Animation steps are per logical line instead of per “pre‑wrapped” visual line; this makes some commits slightly larger but keeps the behavior simple and predictable. Streaming responses are still represented as a sequence of logical history entries (first line + continuations) and integrate with the same scrolling, selection, and printing model. --- ## Printing History on Suspend and Exit ### High‑water mark and append‑only scrollback - Introduce a **cell‑based high‑water mark** (`printed_history_cells`) on the transcript: - Represents “how many cells at the front of the transcript have already been printed”. - Completely independent of wrapped line counts or terminal geometry. - Whenever we print history (suspend or exit): - Take the suffix of `transcript_cells` beyond `printed_history_cells`. - Render just that suffix into styled lines at the **current** width. - Write those lines to stdout. - Advance `printed_history_cells` to cover all cells we just printed. - Older cells are never re‑rendered for scrollback. They stay in whatever wrapping they had when printed, which is acceptable as long as the logical content is present once. ### Suspend (`Ctrl+Z`) - On suspend: - Leave alt screen if active and restore normal terminal modes. - Render the not‑yet‑printed suffix of the transcript and append it to normal scrollback. - Advance the high‑water mark. - Suspend the process. - On resume (`fg`): - Re‑enter the TUI mode (alt screen + input modes). - Clear the viewport region and fully redraw from in‑memory transcript and state. This gives predictable behavior across terminals without trying to maintain scrollback live. ### Exit - On exit: - Render any remaining unprinted cells once and write them to stdout. - Add an extra blank line after the final Codex history cell before printing token usage, so the transcript and usage info are visually separated. - If you never suspended, exit prints the entire transcript exactly once. - If you suspended one or more times, exit prints only the cells appended after the last suspend. --- ## Configuration: Suspend Printing This PR also adds configuration to control **when** we print history: - New TUI config option to gate printing on suspend: - At minimum: - `print_on_suspend = true` – current behavior: print new history at each suspend *and* on exit. - `print_on_suspend = false` – only print on exit. - Default is tuned to preserve current behavior, but this can be revisited based on feedback. - The config is respected in the suspend path: - If disabled, suspend only restores terminal modes and stops rendering but does not print new history. - Exit still prints the full not‑yet‑printed suffix once. This keeps the core viewport logic agnostic to preference, while letting users who care about quiet scrollback opt out of suspend printing. --- ## Tradeoffs What we gain: - A single authoritative history model (the in‑memory transcript). - Deterministic viewport rendering independent of terminal quirks. - Suspend/exit flows that: - Print each logical history cell exactly once. - Work across resizes and different terminals. - Interact cleanly with alt screen and raw‑mode toggling. - Consistent, content‑anchored scrolling, selection, and copy. - Streaming messages that reflow correctly with the viewport width. What we accept: - Scrollback may contain older cells wrapped differently than newer ones. - Streaming responses appear in scrollback as a sequence of blocks corresponding to their streaming structure, not as a single retroactively reflowed paragraph. - We do not attempt to rewrite or reflow already‑printed scrollback. For deeper rationale and diagrams, see `docs/tui_viewport_and_history.md` and `codex-rs/tui/streaming_wrapping_design.md`. --- ## Still to Do Before This PR Is Ready These are scoped to this PR (not long‑term future work): - [ ] **Streaming wrapping polish** - Double‑check all streaming paths use display‑time wrapping only. - Ensure tests cover resizing after streaming has started. - [ ] **Suspend printing config** - Finalize config shape and default (keep existing behavior vs opt‑out). - Wire config through TUI startup and document it in the appropriate config docs. - [x] **Bottom pane positioning** - Ensure the bottom pane is pegged high when there’s no history and smoothly moves down as the transcript fills, matching the current behavior across startup and resume. - [x] **Transcript mouse scrolling** - Re‑enable wheel‑based transcript scrolling on top of the new scroll model. - Make sure mouse scroll does not get confused with “alternate scroll” modes from terminals. - [x] **Mouse selection vs streaming** - When selection is active, stop auto‑scrolling on streaming so the selection remains stable on the selected content. - Ensure that when streaming continues after selection is cleared, “follow latest output” mode resumes correctly. - [ ] **Auto‑scroll during drag** - While the user is dragging a selection, auto‑scroll when the cursor is at/near the top or bottom of the transcript viewport to allow selecting beyond the current visible window. - [ ] **Feature flag / rollout** - Investigate gating the new viewport/history behavior behind a feature flag for initial rollout, so we can fall back to the old behavior if needed during early testing. - [ ] **Before/after videos** - Capture short clips showing: - Scrolling (mouse + keys). - Selection and copy. - Streaming behavior under resize. - Suspend/resume and exit printing. - Use these to validate UX and share context in the PR discussion. |
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Codex CLI (Rust Implementation)
We provide Codex CLI as a standalone, native executable to ensure a zero-dependency install.
Installing Codex
Today, the easiest way to install Codex is via npm:
npm i -g @openai/codex
codex
You can also install via Homebrew (brew install --cask codex) or download a platform-specific release directly from our GitHub Releases.
Documentation quickstart
- First run with Codex? Follow the walkthrough in
docs/getting-started.mdfor prompts, keyboard shortcuts, and session management. - Already shipping with Codex and want deeper control? Jump to
docs/advanced.mdand the configuration reference atdocs/config.md.
What's new in the Rust CLI
The Rust implementation is now the maintained Codex CLI and serves as the default experience. It includes a number of features that the legacy TypeScript CLI never supported.
Config
Codex supports a rich set of configuration options. Note that the Rust CLI uses config.toml instead of config.json. See docs/config.md for details.
Model Context Protocol Support
MCP client
Codex CLI functions as an MCP client that allows the Codex CLI and IDE extension to connect to MCP servers on startup. See the configuration documentation for details.
MCP server (experimental)
Codex can be launched as an MCP server by running codex mcp-server. This allows other MCP clients to use Codex as a tool for another agent.
Use the @modelcontextprotocol/inspector to try it out:
npx @modelcontextprotocol/inspector codex mcp-server
Use codex mcp to add/list/get/remove MCP server launchers defined in config.toml, and codex mcp-server to run the MCP server directly.
Notifications
You can enable notifications by configuring a script that is run whenever the agent finishes a turn. The notify documentation includes a detailed example that explains how to get desktop notifications via terminal-notifier on macOS. When Codex detects that it is running under WSL 2 inside Windows Terminal (WT_SESSION is set), the TUI automatically falls back to native Windows toast notifications so approval prompts and completed turns surface even though Windows Terminal does not implement OSC 9.
codex exec to run Codex programmatically/non-interactively
To run Codex non-interactively, run codex exec PROMPT (you can also pass the prompt via stdin) and Codex will work on your task until it decides that it is done and exits. Output is printed to the terminal directly. You can set the RUST_LOG environment variable to see more about what's going on.
Experimenting with the Codex Sandbox
To test to see what happens when a command is run under the sandbox provided by Codex, we provide the following subcommands in Codex CLI:
# macOS
codex sandbox macos [--full-auto] [--log-denials] [COMMAND]...
# Linux
codex sandbox linux [--full-auto] [COMMAND]...
# Windows
codex sandbox windows [--full-auto] [COMMAND]...
# Legacy aliases
codex debug seatbelt [--full-auto] [--log-denials] [COMMAND]...
codex debug landlock [--full-auto] [COMMAND]...
Selecting a sandbox policy via --sandbox
The Rust CLI exposes a dedicated --sandbox (-s) flag that lets you pick the sandbox policy without having to reach for the generic -c/--config option:
# Run Codex with the default, read-only sandbox
codex --sandbox read-only
# Allow the agent to write within the current workspace while still blocking network access
codex --sandbox workspace-write
# Danger! Disable sandboxing entirely (only do this if you are already running in a container or other isolated env)
codex --sandbox danger-full-access
The same setting can be persisted in ~/.codex/config.toml via the top-level sandbox_mode = "MODE" key, e.g. sandbox_mode = "workspace-write".
Code Organization
This folder is the root of a Cargo workspace. It contains quite a bit of experimental code, but here are the key crates:
core/contains the business logic for Codex. Ultimately, we hope this to be a library crate that is generally useful for building other Rust/native applications that use Codex.exec/"headless" CLI for use in automation.tui/CLI that launches a fullscreen TUI built with Ratatui.cli/CLI multitool that provides the aforementioned CLIs via subcommands.