How I keep Codex side chats and old tasks findable without losing work

Losing a half-finished investigation because your terminal session could only hold one thread at a time is the real cost of scattered Codex context. The opt-in terminal workspace now supports multiple side-chat tabs plus searchable older tasks, so context survives restarts.

What it is

Codex adds multi-tab side chats in its opt-in terminal workspace, with saved local side chats reopened after restart. Older tasks are searchable from the agent command center by name, prompt preview, or working directory.

Applied case

A developer juggling a bug fix and an architecture question can open a side-chat tab for each thread, switch between them with the keyboard or mouse, and reopen them after restarting Codex because local side chats are saved. Later, they find an old task from the command center by searching its working directory or a prompt preview instead of scrolling history. Collapsing turn details in the full-screen transcript also folds completed activity under each prompt while keeping answers visible and tool output searchable.

• Switch tabs by keyboard or mouse; local side chats persist across restarts

When to use it

Use when you run parallel questions or need to revisit older tasks by name or directory.
Skip when you need to search arbitrary terminal history: task search covers tasks, not every past prompt outside them.

Read more

Codex release notes