Allow editing/removing pending steer messages before they are applied

Open 💬 3 comments Opened Apr 3, 2026 by SeleiXi

💡 Likely answer: A maintainer (github-actions[bot], contributor) responded on this thread — see the highlighted reply below.

What variant of Codex are you using?

App

What feature would you like to see?

Allow users to edit a pending steer message before it is applied to the active thread.

Right now, steer messages are useful for adjusting an in-progress task, but if I notice that the steer message has no way to revise it before it takes effect. (On the other hand, queued message is editable)

Suggested behavior

If a steer message is still pending, let the user reopen and edit it
Editing it should replace the pending version, not create a second queued message
If possible, users should also be able to cancel/remove the pending steer message entirely

Use cases

I send a steer message and immediately notice a typo or ambiguous wording
I want to refine the instruction before Codex consumes it
I want to replace a steer message instead of sending another corrective message
I want better control over in-progress guidance without creating extra noise in the thread

Why this would help

Steer messages are most useful when they are precise. If users cannot revise a pending steer message cleanly, they may need to send multiple follow-up corrections, which adds noise and makes the thread harder to follow.

Allowing direct editing of pending steer messages would make steering more reliable and easier to use.

Additional information

_No response_

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3 Comments

github-actions[bot] contributor · 4 months ago

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

#16015
#14980

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CySlider · 1 month ago

Yes, a cancel would already be really helpful. It is always really annoying if you notice the error right after sending it. Often trying to quickly type in another correcting followup, just to see how this message was ingested in-between, hoping this will not completely mess with that agent's head.

uxfion · 6 days ago

I’d really like to see this supported in the Codex CLI/TUI as well.

I’m currently using codex-cli 0.149.0, and this is a common workflow for me:

Codex is already working on a task.
I type a follow-up and press Enter.
It becomes a pending steer under Messages to be submitted after next tool call.
Before the next tool call happens, I notice a typo, ambiguity, or something I want to change.
At that point, I want to pull that pending steer back into the composer, edit it, and replace the original pending message — or cancel it entirely.

Sending another corrective steer is not equivalent because there is a race: the original steer may be consumed before the correction arrives.

There are also several related CLI/TUI issues that make this feel like a parity/regression gap rather than an isolated feature request:

#14980 asks for canceling a pending message in the CLI/TUI.
#14213 shows an older CLI workflow where a Return/Enter steer could be pulled back into the composer, although it was not correctly removed from the pending state.
#38977 documents the current distinction: Enter → pending steer, while Tab → queued follow-up, and queued follow-ups can already be edited with shift + ←.

So today, queued follow-ups are editable, but pending steers are not.

Ideally the CLI should support a race-safe edit/replace and cancel operation for a still-pending steer. If it has already been consumed, the CLI can simply report that it is no longer editable.