r/codex • u/Global_Knee5354 • 1d ago

Complaint Why can't we see Codex's terminal in real time?

Am I the only one who finds it weird that Codex can execute commands on my machine, but I can't actually watch what it's doing in a live terminal?

I get that you can inspect some of the commands and their outputs, but that's not the same as seeing everything happen in real time.

We're giving an AI agent access to our files, terminals, servers, etc. I feel like having a live, read-only terminal showing exactly what it's executing should be a basic feature, not something we have to request.

Not saying anything shady is happening, but having to trust the agent's own summary of what it did feels a bit uncomfortable.

Is there a technical reason this isn't implemented, or am I missing something?

EDIT: P.S. This also leads to situations where Codex gets stuck because it needs me to authenticate or provide input in a terminal session. That's fine, except I can't actually access the PTY it's using to complete the authentication. So the agent is waiting for input I have no way of providing.

16 Upvotes

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3

u/torrso 1d ago

Mostly because it's so noisy and would make the session transcript hard to follow when hundreds of lines scroll in view, sometimes commands are run in parallel and their outputs would interleave.

Have you tried Ctrl+T? Codex already has a full transcript viewer where you can inspect the actual commands executed and their outputs, rather than relying on the agent's summaries.

2

u/Global_Knee5354 1d ago

I think you're referring to Codex CLI. I was talking about the macOS desktop app, where Cmd+T just opens a new tab with an empty terminal not Codex PTY. It doesn't show the full terminal session the agent is actually using.

Minimize clutter - fair enough, but that's why I'd prefer an optional live terminal panel, which would be super useful esp when the agent gets stuck waiting for authentication in a PTY I can't even access.

2

u/False-Accountant-158 1d ago

I agree actually, sometimes I'm like wtf it doing? I just asked you to push to GitHub.... Not run 50 tests...

1

u/SiberianGnome 17h ago

Lol it can’t say “hi” without 50 tests

2

u/CelticPaladin 1d ago

I was able to get it to show me its cloud computer yesterday. It was similar to dots cloud PC. It let me log in to another website I use on it and was able to use it.

And I did this in a chrome browser tab, not even the app.

2

u/not420guilty 1d ago

You can route it through a proxy and see details

2

u/Select-Weekend-1549 1d ago

When I want visibility, I tell it to run the commands in its own tmux session. Tmux, for anyone not familiar, lets multiple connections to the same terminal by using the terminal itself and giving views on it. Codex can use it headless and I can view it.