openai / openai/codex

Restore direct `codex resume <thread-id>` hint on exit, or make it configurable

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#41,505 2 comments 2 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

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CLI enhancement session TUI
Dominant language
Rust
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Forks
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Description

What variant of Codex are you using?

Codex CLI / TUI

What feature would you like to see?

PR #23234 changed the exit hint for named threads from:

To continue this session, run codex resume <thread-id>

to:

To continue this session, run codex resume, then select <thread-name> (<thread-id>)

I understand the motivation behind #23234: thread names are not necessarily unique, so suggesting codex resume <thread-name> directly would be ambiguous.

However, the thread ID itself is unique, and Codex already supports:

codex resume <thread-id>

For users who frequently resume sessions from terminal history, copy/paste, scripts, or multiple terminals, the previous hint was considerably more useful because it provided a directly executable command.

The new behavior adds an unnecessary interactive step:

codex resume
→ open picker
→ locate/select thread

when the exact thread ID is already available at the time the exit message is generated.

Suggested behavior

Ideally, /exit should continue to display the direct UUID-based command even when the thread has a name:

To continue this session, run codex resume 01a04cab-3b3c-7ff3-9ca7-bac161xx41d5

The thread name could optionally still be shown as additional context:

To continue "Alege domeniul pentru portal", run:
codex resume 01a04cab-3b3c-7ff3-9ca7-bac161xx41d5

This preserves both:

  • the human-readable thread name;
  • a deterministic, directly executable resume command.
Alternative

If the picker-based behavior is preferred as the default, it would be useful to make the exit hint configurable, for example:

resume_hint = "direct"

versus:

resume_hint = "picker"
Why this matters

codex resume <thread-id> is:

  • deterministic;
  • non-interactive;
  • directly copy/pasteable;
  • shell-history friendly;
  • usable from scripts;
  • unaffected by duplicate thread names.

The picker is useful for discovering sessions, but when exiting a known session Codex already knows its exact thread ID, so requiring the user to rediscover that session through the picker feels like a regression in CLI ergonomics.

Related: #23181, #23234.

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start by tracing the Codex CLI/TUI exit-message generation and the existing codex resume picker and direct thread-ID paths; the issue does not name specific files or tests. Choose and document the supported hint behavior, then verify that exiting a named thread produces a directly executable UUID command or the agreed configurable alternative, with coverage for the resulting message.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
rust
Domain
cli, developer-experience
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
3/5
Estimated time
1-2 days
Activity status
Active
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
64/100

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