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Codex Issues / #13159

Codex extension will not display reasoning chain unless you scroll up and back down in chat

Resolved 💬 7 comments Opened Mar 1, 2026 by Rawalanche Closed Mar 4, 2026
💡 Likely answer: A maintainer (github-actions[bot], contributor) responded on this thread — see the highlighted reply below.

What version of the IDE extension are you using?

0.4.79

What subscription do you have?

Plus

Which IDE are you using?

VSCode

What platform is your computer?

Windows 11 25H2

What issue are you seeing?

When asking codex a question that triggers reasoning, the chat area will just show "Thinking" for dozens of seconds up to several minutes, and then proceeds with answer. The thinking text is simply stuck. If you scroll just slightly up and back down, the live reasoning chain is immediately show.

What steps can reproduce the bug?

  1. Ask codex some hard question that requires reasoning, ideally on xhigh mode
  2. Codex will just show "Thinking..." in the chat area
  3. Scroll little bit up in the chat area and back down
  4. Live reasoning feed is immediately displayed

What is the expected behavior?

The Live reasoning feed is always displayed. The chat area does not get stuck displaying "Thinking" text until the full agent task is complete.

Additional information

_No response_

View original on GitHub ↗

7 Comments

github-actions[bot] contributor · 4 months ago

Potential duplicates detected. Please review them and close your issue if it is a duplicate.

  • #13145
  • #13133

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YodaSpow · 4 months ago

Confirming this is still reproducible on the latest extension build I have installed.

Environment

  • VS Code: 1.109.5 (Universal)
  • Commit: 072586267e68ece9a47aa43f8c108e0dcbf44622
  • Electron: 39.3.0
  • Chromium: 142.0.7444.265
  • Node: 22.21.1
  • macOS: Darwin arm64 24.3.0
  • Subscription: Plus

Codex extension (VS Code Marketplace)

  • Name: OpenAI ChatGPT (Codex)
  • Identifier: openai.chatgpt
  • Version: 0.4.79
  • Published: 12 months ago
  • Last Updated: 1 day ago (2026-02-28)
  • Last Released: 1 day ago (2026-02-28)
  • Size: 117.55 MB

Observed Behaviour

  • New chats display “Thinking”
  • No incremental reasoning stream is visible during the turn
  • Full output appears only once the task completes

Confirmed Workarounds

The reasoning stream is not missing — it is simply not repainting live.

The following actions reliably force the buffered content to render immediately:

  • Scroll slightly up and back down in the chat (most reliable)
  • Click the “Thinking” label
  • Switch focus to another VS Code pane and back

Conclusion (Evidence-Based)

Streaming appears to function correctly (tokens arrive and render instantly once a layout/focus event occurs).

This strongly indicates a webview repaint/update issue rather than a backend streaming problem.

This behaviour was isolated by working through the issue step-by-step with ChatGPT (GPT-5.2), specifically testing whether the problem was streaming-related or render-related.

Zicore · 4 months ago

Clicking on "Thinking" or that area also refreshes the view.

Sing303 contributor · 4 months ago

Confirming this is still reproducible on my latest extension build (as of 2026-03-02).

Environment

  • VS Code: 1.109.5 (commit 072586267e68ece9a47aa43f8c108e0dcbf44622)
  • Electron: 39.3.0
  • Chromium: 142.0.7444.265
  • Node: 22.21.1
  • OS: Windows 11 25H2
  • Subscription: Pro
  • Extension: OpenAI ChatGPT (openai.chatgpt) 0.5.79 (win32-x64)

Observed behavior

  • New turns can remain on “Thinking…”
  • No incremental reasoning stream is visible until a UI interaction occurs
  • Buffered output appears immediately after a repaint-triggering action (slight scroll up/down, clicking “Thinking”, or changing panel focus and back)

Expected behavior

  • Streaming reasoning should render live without requiring manual repaint-triggering actions.

This looks like a webview repaint/update issue rather than a backend streaming failure (data appears to arrive, but rendering is deferred until layout/focus events).

Related reports for triage correlation: #13133 and duplicate chain #13145 -> #13106.

jasonwei1002 · 4 months ago

So when will it be fixed?

JohnnyBill · 4 months ago

for me it's fixed in 0.5.80

Sing303 contributor · 4 months ago

Update: resolved for me after upgrading the OpenAI ChatGPT VS Code extension to 0.5.80 (from 0.5.79).

I can no longer reproduce the issue:

  • turns no longer get stuck on “Thinking…”
  • reasoning/output now streams live
  • no repaint/focus interaction is needed anymore

Looks fixed on my side. Sharing as an additional datapoint.
Thanks for the fix.