Summary
- distinguish exec end handling targets (active tracking, active orphan
history, new cell) so unified exec responses don’t clobber unrelated
exploring cells
- ensure orphan ends flush existing exploring history when complete,
insert standalone history entries, and keep active cells correct
- add regression tests plus a snapshot covering the new behavior and
expose the ExecCell completion result for verification
Fix for https://github.com/openai/codex/issues/12278
---------
Co-authored-by: Josh McKinney <joshka@openai.com>
## Problem
Long URLs containing `/` and `-` characters are split across multiple
terminal lines by `textwrap`'s default hyphenation rules. This breaks
terminal link detection: emulators can no longer identify the URL as
clickable, and copy-paste yields a truncated fragment. The issue affects
every view that renders user or agent text — exec output, history cells,
markdown, the app-link setup screen, and the VT100 scrollback path.
A secondary bug compounds the first: `desired_height()` calculations
count logical lines rather than viewport rows. When a URL overflows its
line and wraps visually, the height budget is too small, causing content
to clip or leave gaps.
Here is how the complete URL is interpreted by the terminal before
(first line only) and after (complete URL):
| Before | After |
|---|---|
| <img width="777" height="1002" alt="Screenshot 2026-02-17 at 7 59 11
PM"
src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/193a89a0-7e56-49c5-8b76-53499a76e7e3"
/> | <img width="777" height="1002" alt="Screenshot 2026-02-17 at 7 58
40 PM"
src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/0b9b4c14-aafb-439f-9ffe-f6bba556f95e"
/> |
## Mental model
The TUI now treats URL-like tokens as atomic units that must never be
split by the wrapping engine. Every call site that previously used
`word_wrap_*` has been migrated to `adaptive_wrap_*`, which inspects
each line for URL-like tokens and switches wrapping strategy
accordingly:
- **Non-URL lines** follow the existing `textwrap` path unchanged (word
boundaries, optional indentation, hyphenation).
- **URL-only lines** (with at most decorative markers like `│`, `-`,
`1.`) are emitted unwrapped so terminal link detection works; ratatui's
`Wrap { trim: false }` handles the final character wrap at render time.
- **Mixed lines** (URL + substantive non-URL prose) flow through
`adaptive_wrap_line` so prose wraps naturally at word boundaries while
URL tokens remain unsplit.
Height measurement everywhere now delegates to
`Paragraph::line_count(width)`, which accounts for the visual row cost
of overflowed lines. This single source of truth replaces ad-hoc line
counting in individual cells.
For terminal scrollback (the VT100 path that prints history when the TUI
exits), URL-only lines are emitted unwrapped so the terminal's own link
detector can find them. Mixed URL+prose lines use adaptive wrapping so
surrounding text wraps naturally. Continuation rows are pre-cleared to
avoid stale content artifacts.
## Non-goals
- Full RFC 3986 URL parsing. The detector is a conservative heuristic
that covers `scheme://host`, bare domains (`example.com/path`),
`localhost:port`, and IPv4 hosts. IPv6 (`[::1]:8080`) and exotic schemes
are intentionally excluded from v1.
- Changing wrapping behavior for non-URL content.
- Reflowing or reformatting existing terminal scrollback on resize.
## Tradeoffs
| Decision | Upside | Downside |
|----------|--------|----------|
| Heuristic URL detection vs. full parser | Fast, zero-alloc on the hot
path; conservative enough to reject file paths like `src/main.rs` |
False negatives on obscure URL formats (they get split as before) |
| Adaptive (three-path) wrapping | Non-URL lines are untouched — no
behavior change, no perf cost; mixed lines wrap prose naturally while
preserving URLs | Three wrapping strategies to reason about when
debugging layout |
| Row-based truncation with line-unit ellipsis | Accurate viewport
budget; stable "N lines omitted" count across terminal widths |
`truncate_lines_middle` is more complex (must compute per-line row cost)
|
| Unwrapped URL-only lines in scrollback | Terminal emulators detect
clickable links; copy-paste gets the full URL | TUI and scrollback
formatting diverge for URL-only lines |
| Default `desired_height` via `Paragraph::line_count` | DRY — most
cells inherit correct measurement | Cells with custom layout must
remember to override |
## Architecture
```mermaid
flowchart TD
A["adaptive_wrap_*()"] --> B{"line_contains_url_like?"}
B -- No URL tokens --> C["word_wrap_line<br/>(textwrap default)"]
B -- Has URL tokens --> D{"mixed URL + prose?"}
D -- "URL-only<br/>(+ decorative markers)" --> E["emit unwrapped<br/>(terminal char-wraps)"]
D -- "Mixed<br/>(URL + substantive text)" --> F["adaptive_wrap_line<br/>(AsciiSpace + custom WordSplitter)"]
C --> G["Paragraph::line_count(w)<br/>(single height truth)"]
E --> G
F --> G
```
**Changed files:**
| File | Role |
|------|------|
| `wrapping.rs` | URL detection heuristics, mixed-line detection,
`adaptive_wrap_*` functions, custom `WordSplitter` |
| `exec_cell/render.rs` | Row-aware `truncate_lines_middle`, adaptive
wrapping for command/output display |
| `history_cell.rs` | Migrate all cell types to `adaptive_wrap_*`;
default `desired_height` via `Paragraph::line_count` |
| `insert_history.rs` | Three-path scrollback wrapping (unwrapped
URL-only, adaptive mixed, word-wrapped text); continuation row clearing
|
| `app_link_view.rs` | Adaptive wrapping for setup URL; `desired_height`
via `Paragraph::line_count` |
| `markdown_render.rs` | Adaptive wrapping in `finish_paragraph` |
| `model_migration.rs` | Viewport-aware wrapping for narrow-pane
markdown |
| `pager_overlay.rs` | `Wrap { trim: false }` for transcript and
streaming chunks |
| `queued_user_messages.rs` | Migrate to `adaptive_wrap_lines` |
| `status/card.rs` | Migrate to `adaptive_wrap_lines` |
## Observability
- **Ellipsis message** in truncated exec output reports omitted count in
logical lines (stable across resize) rather than viewport rows
(fluctuates).
- URL detection is deterministic and stateless — no hidden caching or
memoization to go stale.
- Height mismatch bugs surface immediately as visual clipping or gaps;
the `Paragraph::line_count` path is the same code ratatui uses at render
time, so measurement and rendering cannot diverge.
## Tests
26 new unit tests across 7 files, covering:
- **URL integrity**: assert a URL-like token appears on exactly one
rendered line (not split across two).
- **Height accuracy**: compare `desired_height()` against
`Paragraph::line_count()` for URL-containing content.
- **Row-aware truncation**: verify ellipsis counts logical lines and
output fits within the row budget.
- **Scrollback rendering**: VT100 backend tests confirm prefix and URL
land on the same row; continuation rows are cleared; mixed URL+prose
lines wrap prose while preserving URL tokens.
- **Mixed URL+prose detection**: `line_has_mixed_url_and_non_url_tokens`
correctly distinguishes lines with substantive non-URL text from lines
with only decorative markers alongside a URL.
- **Heuristic correctness**: positive matches (`https://...`,
`example.com/path`, `localhost:3000/api`, `192.168.1.1:8080/health`) and
negative matches (`src/main.rs`, `foo/bar`, `hello-world`).
## Risks and open items
1. **URL-like tokens in code output** (e.g. `example.com/api` inside a
JSON blob) will trigger URL-preserving wrap on that line. This is
acceptable — the worst case is a slightly wider line, not broken output.
2. **Very long non-URL tokens on a URL line** can only break at
character boundaries (the custom splitter emits all char indices for
non-URL words). On extremely narrow terminals this could overflow, but
narrow terminals already degrade gracefully.
3. **No IPv6 support** — `[::1]:8080/path` will be treated as a non-URL
and may get split. Can be added later without API changes.
Fixes#5457
## Why
`codex-rs/core/src/lib.rs` re-exported a broad set of types and modules
from `codex-protocol` and `codex-shell-command`. That made it easy for
workspace crates to import those APIs through `codex-core`, which in
turn hides dependency edges and makes it harder to reduce compile-time
coupling over time.
This change removes those public re-exports so call sites must import
from the source crates directly. Even when a crate still depends on
`codex-core` today, this makes dependency boundaries explicit and
unblocks future work to drop `codex-core` dependencies where possible.
## What Changed
- Removed public re-exports from `codex-rs/core/src/lib.rs` for:
- `codex_protocol::protocol` and related protocol/model types (including
`InitialHistory`)
- `codex_protocol::config_types` (`protocol_config_types`)
- `codex_shell_command::{bash, is_dangerous_command, is_safe_command,
parse_command, powershell}`
- Migrated workspace Rust call sites to import directly from:
- `codex_protocol::protocol`
- `codex_protocol::config_types`
- `codex_protocol::models`
- `codex_shell_command`
- Added explicit `Cargo.toml` dependencies (`codex-protocol` /
`codex-shell-command`) in crates that now import those crates directly.
- Kept `codex-core` internal modules compiling by using `pub(crate)`
aliases in `core/src/lib.rs` (internal-only, not part of the public
API).
- Updated the two utility crates that can already drop a `codex-core`
dependency edge entirely:
- `codex-utils-approval-presets`
- `codex-utils-cli`
## Verification
- `cargo test -p codex-utils-approval-presets`
- `cargo test -p codex-utils-cli`
- `cargo check --workspace --all-targets`
- `just clippy`
We are removing feature-gated shared crates from the `codex-rs`
workspace. `codex-common` grouped several unrelated utilities behind
`[features]`, which made dependency boundaries harder to reason about
and worked against the ongoing effort to eliminate feature flags from
workspace crates.
Splitting these utilities into dedicated crates under `utils/` aligns
this area with existing workspace structure and keeps each dependency
explicit at the crate boundary.
## What changed
- Removed `codex-rs/common` (`codex-common`) from workspace members and
workspace dependencies.
- Added six new utility crates under `codex-rs/utils/`:
- `codex-utils-cli`
- `codex-utils-elapsed`
- `codex-utils-sandbox-summary`
- `codex-utils-approval-presets`
- `codex-utils-oss`
- `codex-utils-fuzzy-match`
- Migrated the corresponding modules out of `codex-common` into these
crates (with tests), and added matching `BUILD.bazel` targets.
- Updated direct consumers to use the new crates instead of
`codex-common`:
- `codex-rs/cli`
- `codex-rs/tui`
- `codex-rs/exec`
- `codex-rs/app-server`
- `codex-rs/mcp-server`
- `codex-rs/chatgpt`
- `codex-rs/cloud-tasks`
- Updated workspace lockfile entries to reflect the new dependency graph
and removal of `codex-common`.
What
-----
- Fix the Ctrl+T transcript overlay so that very long exec output lines
are soft‑wrapped to the viewport width instead of being rendered as a
single truncated row.
- Add a regression test to `TranscriptOverlay` to ensure long exec
outputs are rendered on multiple lines in the overlay.
Why
----
- Previously, the transcript overlay rendered extremely long single exec
lines as one on‑screen row and simply cut them off at the right edge,
with no horizontal scrolling.
- This made it impossible to inspect the full content of long tool/exec
outputs in the transcript view, even though the main TUI view already
wrapped those lines.
- Fixes#7454.
How
----
- Update `ExecCell::transcript_lines` to wrap exec output lines using
the existing `RtOptions`/`word_wrap_line` helpers so that transcript
rendering is width‑aware.
- Reuse the existing line utilities to expand the wrapped `Line` values
into the transcript overlay, preserving styling while respecting the
current viewport width.
- Add `transcript_overlay_wraps_long_exec_output_lines` test in
`pager_overlay.rs` that constructs a long single‑line exec output,
renders the transcript overlay into a small buffer, and asserts that the
long marker string spans multiple rendered lines.
What
- Limit the TUI "user shell" output panel by the number of visible
screen lines rather than by the number of logical lines.
- Apply middle truncation after wrapping, so a few extremely long lines
cannot expand into hundreds of visible lines.
- Add a regression test to guard this behavior.
Why
When the `ExecCommandSource::UserShell` tool returns a small number of
very long logical lines, the TUI wraps those lines into many visual
lines. The existing truncation logic applied
`USER_SHELL_TOOL_CALL_MAX_LINES` to the number of logical lines *before*
wrapping.
As a result, a command like:
- `Ran bash -lc "grep -R --line-number 'maskAssetId' ."`
or a synthetic command that prints a single ~50,000‑character line, can
produce hundreds of screen lines and effectively flood the viewport. The
intended middle truncation for user shell output does not take effect in
this scenario.
How
- In `codex-rs/tui/src/exec_cell/render.rs`, change the `ExecCell`
rendering path for `ExecCommandSource::UserShell` so that:
- Each logical line from `CommandOutput::aggregated_output` is first
wrapped via `word_wrap_line` into multiple screen lines using the
appropriate `RtOptions` and width from the `EXEC_DISPLAY_LAYOUT`
configuration.
- `truncate_lines_middle` is then applied to the wrapped screen lines,
with `USER_SHELL_TOOL_CALL_MAX_LINES` as the limit. This means the limit
is enforced on visible screen lines, not logical lines.
- The existing layout struct (`ExecDisplayLayout`) continues to provide
`output_max_lines`, so user shell output is subject to both
`USER_SHELL_TOOL_CALL_MAX_LINES` and the layout-specific
`output_max_lines` constraint.
- Keep using `USER_SHELL_TOOL_CALL_MAX_LINES` as the cap, but interpret
it as a per‑tool‑call limit on screen lines.
- Add a regression test `user_shell_output_is_limited_by_screen_lines`
in `codex-rs/tui/src/exec_cell/render.rs` that:
- Constructs two extremely long logical lines containing a short marker
(`"Z"`), so each wrapped screen line still contains the marker.
- Wraps them at a narrow width to generate many screen lines.
- Asserts that the unbounded wrapped output would exceed
`USER_SHELL_TOOL_CALL_MAX_LINES` screen lines.
- Renders an `ExecCell` for `ExecCommandSource::UserShell` at the same
width and counts rendered lines containing the marker.
- Asserts `output_screen_lines <= USER_SHELL_TOOL_CALL_MAX_LINES`,
guarding against regressions where truncation happens before wrapping.
This change keeps user shell output readable while ensuring it cannot
flood the TUI, even when the tool emits a few extremely long lines.
Tests
- `cargo test -p codex-tui`
Issue
- Fixes#7447
This PR adds support for a new feature flag `tui.animations`. By
default, the TUI uses animations in its welcome screen, "working"
spinners, and "shimmer" effects. This animations can interfere with
screen readers, so it's good to provide a way to disable them.
This change is inspired by [a
PR](https://github.com/openai/codex/pull/4014) contributed by @Orinks.
That PR has faltered a bit, but I think the core idea is sound. This
version incorporates feedback from @aibrahim-oai. In particular:
1. It uses a feature flag (`tui.animations`) rather than the unqualified
CLI key `no-animations`. Feature flags are the preferred way to expose
boolean switches. They are also exposed via CLI command switches.
2. It includes more complete documentation.
3. It disables a few animations that the other PR omitted.
- introduce RenderableItem to support both owned and borrowed children
in composite Renderables
- refactor some of our gnarlier manual layouts, BottomPane and
ChatWidget, to use ColumnRenderable
- Renderable and friends now handle cursor_pos()
feature: Add "!cmd" user shell execution
This change lets users run local shell commands directly from the TUI by
prefixing their input with ! (e.g. !ls). Output is truncated to keep the
exec cell usable, and Ctrl-C cleanly
interrupts long-running commands (e.g. !sleep 10000).
**Summary of changes**
- Route Op::RunUserShellCommand through a dedicated UserShellCommandTask
(core/src/tasks/user_shell.rs), keeping the task logic out of codex.rs.
- Reuse the existing tool router: the task constructs a ToolCall for the
local_shell tool and relies on ShellHandler, so no manual MCP tool
lookup is required.
- Emit exec lifecycle events (ExecCommandBegin/ExecCommandEnd) so the
TUI can show command metadata, live output, and exit status.
**End-to-end flow**
**TUI handling**
1. ChatWidget::submit_user_message (TUI) intercepts messages starting
with !.
2. Non-empty commands dispatch Op::RunUserShellCommand { command };
empty commands surface a help hint.
3. No UserInput items are created, so nothing is enqueued for the model.
**Core submission loop**
4. The submission loop routes the op to handlers::run_user_shell_command
(core/src/codex.rs).
5. A fresh TurnContext is created and Session::spawn_user_shell_command
enqueues UserShellCommandTask.
**Task execution**
6. UserShellCommandTask::run emits TaskStartedEvent, formats the
command, and prepares a ToolCall targeting local_shell.
7. ToolCallRuntime::handle_tool_call dispatches to ShellHandler.
**Shell tool runtime**
8. ShellHandler::run_exec_like launches the process via the unified exec
runtime, honoring sandbox and shell policies, and emits
ExecCommandBegin/End.
9. Stdout/stderr are captured for the UI, but the task does not turn the
resulting ToolOutput into a model response.
**Completion**
10. After ExecCommandEnd, the task finishes without an assistant
message; the session marks it complete and the exec cell displays the
final output.
**Conversation context**
- The command and its output never enter the conversation history or the
model prompt; the flow is local-only.
- Only exec/task events are emitted for UI rendering.
**Demo video**
https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/fcd114b0-4304-4448-a367-a04c43e0b996
This shows the aggregated (stdout + stderr) buffer regardless of exit
code.
Many commands output useful / relevant info on stdout when returning a
non-zero exit code, or the same on stderr when returning an exit code of
0. Often, useful info is present on both stdout AND stderr. Also, the
model sees both. So it is confusing to see commands listed as "(no
output)" that in fact do have output, just on the stream that doesn't
match the exit status, or to see some sort of trivial output like "Tests
failed" but lacking any information about the actual failure.
As such, always display the aggregated output in the display. Transcript
mode remains unchanged as it was already displaying the text that the
model sees, which seems correct for transcript mode.
## Summary
- show a dim “(no output)” placeholder when an executed command produces
no stdout or stderr so empty runs are visible
- update TUI snapshots to include the new placeholder in history
renderings
## Testing
- cargo test -p codex-tui
------
https://chatgpt.com/codex/tasks/task_i_68dc056c1d5883218fe8d9929e9b1657
- Refactor Exec Cell into its own module
- update exec command rendering to inline the first command line
- limit continuation lines
- always show trimmed output
jif-oai ·
Felipe Coury ·
Michael Bolin ·
Ahmed Ibrahim ·
pakrym-oai ·
muyuanjin ·
Eric Traut ·
zhao-oai ·
Jeremy Rose ·
Abhishek Bhardwaj ·
Ed Bayes ·