Notify user when Codex needs attention

Resolved 💬 2 comments Opened Jan 28, 2026 by jvmatl Closed Jan 28, 2026

What feature would you like to see?

PROBLEM

It frequently happens that I find myself working in another window and I don't notice that codex has stopped working because it is waiting for permission to do something that requires elevated privileges. I want to be able to keep my AI minions busy!

REQUEST

I would like to be able to define a shell command that gets called _whenever_ Codex needs my attention, either because it is finished, or because it has a question, or it needs elevated permissions.

If I had this, I could have it echo some bell characters to the terminal to make noise, or pop up a silly xeyes that will show on the screen, or even call a script to text me wherever I am so I can ssh in from the ski slopes and unblock it. 😄

To enable/disable/configure this feature, a new slash command could be added to manage notifications.

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FEATURIZING

I would be very happy with just the baseline request, but there are a couple of _completely optional_ additions that might be useful to some users:

  • Have a default cross-platform notification option, so users don't have to enter a shell command into a config file somewhere. (e.g. have a 'notifyForAttention' boolean, but let users override the notify _method_ with a 'notifyForAttentionAction' config string that gets passed to the local CLI)
  • I could see some value in separating this feature out into two, or even three separate flags -- not worth the additional complexity, IMO, but some people might like it.
  • Notify if permission needed
  • Notify if the AI model has a question
  • OR this could be rolled into the first option and just "Notify whenever I need help"
  • Notify when work is complete/ready for next task. (but don't trigger this when codex first opens, because that would be irritating AF.)

Thanks for your time.

Additional information

_No response_

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