TUI freezes during idle long wait while session continues and completes

What version of Codex CLI is running?

0.128.0

What subscription do you have?

Plus

Which model were you using?

_No response_

What platform is your computer?

Linux

What terminal emulator and version are you using (if applicable)?

alacritty

What issue are you seeing?

The Codex TUI can freeze during a long wait when there is no token streaming or assistant chatter.
The backend session continues running and can complete, but the visible TUI stops updating.

In my case, I intentionally prompted agents to avoid filler/status chatter during long waits. With that setup, the TUI animation stopped, but the task still completed in the background.

I had a local completion hook that sends a notification when the task finishes. That notification arrived even though the TUI was frozen. The old TUI process was still alive until manually killed:

PID 27495
~/.codex/bin/codex-0.128.0
state: Sl+
tty: pts/10

After completion, the session log contained task_complete, and the completion record had notified: true.

What steps can reproduce the bug?

1. Start or resume a Codex CLI TUI session.
2. Run a task that waits for a long time on background work.
3. Prompt the agents not to emit periodic filler/status text while waiting.
4. Leave TUI animations enabled so a frozen UI is visible.
5. Wait through an idle period with little or no token streaming.

Observed result: the TUI can freeze while the backend session continues and eventually completes.

What is the expected behavior?

The TUI should remain responsive during long idle waits, or recover/repaint once backend events arrive. If the backend task completes, the TUI should visibly reflect completion without needing a second Codex session or manual process cleanup.

Additional information

Codex CLI helped identify a likely area to inspect: the TUI appears to rely on activity from streamed rollout/items or similar backend updates to keep the interface moving during long waits.

This issue was written with the assistance of Codex CLI.