Feature request: Claude-style /recap

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• #18125

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Thanks for the feedback. I'm glad to hear someone is making use of the new /side command!

I'm reluctant to add an alias here. We've added aliases for other slash commands in the past, and it has resulted in confusion and negative feedback. I think it's preferable to have just one way to do something.

As for the /recap command, that sounds less like a command and more like a simple prompt ("Give me a concise summary of your progress" or something like that). If it's something that you use often, you could just save it as a skill that you can invoke using $recap or $progress. So I'm not convinced this needs a dedicated slash command.

@etraut-openai Agreed on the /btw alias — one name per command keeps things clean.

On /recap though — I think you're right that the OP is asking for a command, and a skill like $recap could cover that use case. But it might be worth looking at this from a slightly different angle.

In Claude Code, recap is actually a semi-automatic background feature: when you've been idle 3+ min and your terminal is unfocused, it proactively shows a structured summary when you come back. No user action needed. The difference matters because a user-invoked recap — whether slash command or skill — burns tokens to regenerate state the system already had before compaction. An automatic one preserves and surfaces it at the right moment.

So beyond what the OP is requesting, there might be a deeper opportunity here: detect idle-return transitions and proactively surface a compact session summary. That's a session lifecycle feature, not a command surface thing.

For reference, Claude Code's implementation:

• Triggers after 3+ min idle + unfocused terminal + at least 3 conversation turns
• Never fires twice in a row
• Skipped in non-interactive mode
• On by default, toggled via config

The OP's /recap command could still exist as a manual fallback, but the automatic version is where the real UX win is.

I'm reluctant to add an alias here. We've added aliases for other slash commands in the past, and it has resulted in confusion and negative feedback. I think it's preferable to have just one way to do something.

A possible approach to this is to name the commands internally (e.g. launch-ephemeral-sidechat or whatever) and then have config bindings that bind slash commands to internal commands. This approach is similar to what you'd do for custom keybinds that trigger commands.

One interpretation here of the user signal / observation here is that UX in a shell is often highly personal and configuratble (keyboard shortcuts, aliases, etc.). Codex looks a lot like a shell in that regard without the same affordances.

@etraut-openai I'd like to reinforce @xc1427's point, because framing /recap as "just a simple prompt" undersells what makes it valuable. As a heavy Claude Code user, the value isn't the summary text itself — it's the trigger mechanism: it fires semi-automatically when you return to a session that's been idle and unfocused for a few minutes, surfacing a short structured recap of where things stand without you scrolling back through a long response or remembering to ask. A manual /recap command or $recap skill still puts the burden on the user to notice they've lost context and spend tokens regenerating it; the real win is the system detecting the idle-return transition and surfacing the state it already had, on its own. That's a session-lifecycle mechanism, not a command-surface thing — and it's the part I'd most love to see Codex catch up on.

If this is implemented, it would be great if the recap was generated while the cache for the thread was still warm, to avoid a cold-cache hit just for the recap.

(related, it's be great if there was a setting we could configure to enable an automatic action like: "if cache is about to go cold and context is >70% used, compact").