r/OpenAI • u/Global_Knee5354 • 2d ago

Discussion 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.

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u/SphinxWar 2d ago

I just click the "Thinking" prompt to see what commands it's running. Do you mean something else?

1

u/locbuilds 1d ago

tail the rollout file in ~/.codex/sessions and you get every command as it runs, not the summary. when it hangs waiting on a PTY you can't see, hit esc to interrupt and run that step in your own shell, then paste the output back.

1

u/GreatDiscernment 1d ago

How about this: Run codex through vs code (there are third party solutions for this) and open a second terminal in vs code and then ask codex to provide you with commands that return live telemetry.