Add contextual continuation hints and ephemeral refresh prompts
Resolved 💬 4 comments Opened Mar 9, 2026 by oxysoft Closed May 10, 2026
Summary
Codex should expose a continuation-hint system after assistant messages, errors, and idle periods, with ephemeral hints/prompts and a shared annotation pass that decides what should be suggested next.
Problem
There is currently no coherent system for helping the user continue a thread with minimal friction when the next move is obvious.
Useful cases include:
- after an assistant message, suggesting a contextually meaningful next-key action
- after
Escape, surfacing what can be resumed or continued - after an error, hinting the most relevant recovery/continue action
- after long session duration, hinting a summarization/refresh prompt
These all want the same substrate: a unified annotation/intention pass that can identify likely continuation endpoints and express them as concise UI hints.
Requested behavior
- Add contextual continuation hints after assistant messages, errors, and escape/cancel moments
- Support keyed hints such as
1/2/3/4/5/6/7/8/9when those keys have contextual meaning in normal mode - Detect teleological endpoints like
would you like to.../ enumerated next-step affordances and turn them into hints without requiring the user to restate them manually - Add idle/session-age refresh hints, including summarization prompts after long-running sessions
- Render those refresh prompts as ephemeral messages that disappear automatically on the next user message, assistant message, or tool event
Architecture direction
This should not become a pile of separate per-feature LLM calls.
Instead:
- have one global generic annotation pass that tags a message/turn with actionable continuation metadata
- use that shared pass for loom endpoints / continuation hints / prompt necessity detection
- reserve separate extraction tasks only for heavier cases that would overload a single pass, especially if smaller models are used
Success criteria
- After relevant assistant turns, the UI can suggest a meaningful continuation key/action
- Error and escape flows can surface recovery/continue hints automatically
- Long sessions can hint a summarization/refresh move without permanently polluting the transcript
- Ephemeral hint messages self-remove on the next conversation/tool activity
- The system is driven by one coordinated annotation layer rather than many disconnected ad hoc calls
Related context
A narrower companion request covers a direct input gesture for continuation via double-Enter.
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