openai / openai/codex

[CLI] Always show a visual separator between conversation turns

Open
#45,771 0 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

Nobody has claimed this yet.

CLI enhancement TUI
Dominant language
Rust
Stars
125k
Forks
19.4k
PR merge metrics
PR metrics pending

Description

What variant of Codex are you using?

CLI

What feature would you like to see?

Problem

In long Codex CLI conversations, user prompts are difficult to locate. They appear as:

› My question

followed immediately by assistant output:

• Response

A horizontal separator currently appears only when the preceding turn performed tool work. Purely conversational turns
receive no separator, making navigation inconsistent.

Proposed behavior

Always render a horizontal separator between a completed assistant turn and the next user prompt.

An opt-in setting would also solve the problem:

[tui]
always_show_turn_separator = true

## Acceptance criteria

- Every top-level user prompt has a clear visual boundary above it.
- Separators appear after conversational and tool-using turns.
- The behavior remains consistent after resuming a conversation.
- The Worked for … label can remain limited to longer work turns. Only the horizontal divider needs to be unconditional.

### Additional information

_No response_

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

No file or test is named in the issue. Start by locating the CLI/TUI rendering path that decides whether a turn separator is shown, then reproduce conversational and tool-using turns, including a resumed conversation; it is done when every top-level user prompt has a boundary while the Worked for … label remains conditional.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
rust
Domain
cli
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
3/5
Estimated time
1-2 days
Activity status
Active
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
65/100

Get new issues in your inbox

A short digest of beginner-friendly GitHub issues.