Improve user message contrast in the CLI TUI
What variant of Codex are you using?
CLI
What feature would you like to see?
User messages in the CLI TUI can be hard to distinguish from Codex responses when the terminal theme renders both with nearly the same foreground and background colors.
A small but high-impact improvement would be to render user messages with a stronger background panel so they remain easy to visually scan in the transcript.
A good default would be:
- strengthen the user-message background blend when the terminal background is known
- use an explicit gray fallback panel when terminal background detection is unavailable
- apply the same behavior in both
codex-rs/tuiandcodex-rs/tui_app_server
This is narrower than full theme customization, but it materially improves readability immediately.
Additional information
This seems related to #2020, but it is a more targeted usability fix that does not require a full light/dark theme system.
I have a working branch with the change here:
de-monkey-v:gyu/tui-user-message-contrast
The branch updates:
codex-rs/tui/src/style.rscodex-rs/tui_app_server/src/style.rs- related TUI snapshots
Local validation for that branch:
just fmtcargo test -p codex-tui --libcargo test -p codex-tui-app-server --lib./tools/argument-comment-lint/run.sh
If useful, I can also turn that branch into a patch or follow any preferred contribution path for repos with collaborator-only PR creation.
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