## Why
Issue #20489 calls out that animated TUI affordances can be noisy for
screen-reader users. Codex already has `tui.animations = false` as a
reduced-motion setting, but some live activity rows render spinner-style
prefixes in that mode. These were relatively recent regressions.
We have also regressed this pattern more than once by adding new
spinner/shimmer callsites that do not think through the reduced-motion
path, so this PR adds a small guardrail while fixing the current
surfaces.
## What changed
- Omit the live status-row spinner when animations are disabled, so the
row starts with stable text like `Working (...)`.
- Render running hook headers without the spinner prefix when animations
are disabled, while preserving shimmer/spinner behavior when animations
are enabled.
- Centralize TUI activity indicators in `tui/src/motion.rs`, with
explicit reduced-motion choices for hidden prefixes, static bullets, and
plain shimmer-text fallbacks.
- Route existing spinner/shimmer callsites through the central motion
helper, including exec rows, MCP/web-search/loading rows, hook rows,
plugin loading, and onboarding loading text.
- Add a source-scan regression test that rejects direct `spinner(...)`
or `shimmer_spans(...)` usage outside the central module and primitive
definition.
- Add focused coverage that reduced-motion active exec rows are stable,
status rows start without a spinner, running hooks omit the spinner, and
MCP inventory loading stays stable.
- Update the one affected status-indicator snapshot; the existing detail
tree prefix remains unchanged.
## Verification
- `cargo test -p codex-tui`
This is a follow-up to https://github.com/openai/codex/pull/15922. That
previous PR deleted the old `tui` directory and left the new
`tui_app_server` directory in place. This PR renames `tui_app_server` to
`tui` and fixes up all references.
This is the part 1 of 2 PRs that will delete the `tui` /
`tui_app_server` split. This part simply deletes the existing `tui`
directory and marks the `tui_app_server` feature flag as removed. I left
the `tui_app_server` feature flag in place for now so its presence
doesn't result in an error. It is simply ignored.
Part 2 will rename the `tui_app_server` directory `tui`. I did this as
two parts to reduce visible code churn.
- Refactor Exec Cell into its own module
- update exec command rendering to inline the first command line
- limit continuation lines
- always show trimmed output
Eric Traut ·
Ahmed Ibrahim ·