Built-in image_gen tool should accept explicit parameters: size, quality, output_format, filename/path

Resolved 💬 4 comments Opened May 3, 2026 by chrm52 Closed Jul 1, 2026

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

What variant of Codex are you using?

CLI

What feature would you like to see?

The current built-in image_gen tool (enabled via [features] image_generation = true) only accepts a single prompt parameter.

This forces users to cram everything into natural language, which is unreliable for:

Exact dimensions
Output filename / save path
Quality settings
Format (PNG with real transparency, WebP, etc.)

Current behavior (CLI / App)

Generate a hero banner, save as assets/hero.png

### Additional information

_No response_

View original on GitHub ↗

4 Comments

github-actions[bot] contributor · 3 months ago

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

#19864

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chrm52 · 3 months ago

Additional real-world scenario (why explicit `filename` is critical)

This becomes especially painful when multiple Codex agents (or parallel tool calls) are generating images at the same time.

What happens today:

Agent A prompts: “generate hero banner for dashboard”
Agent B prompts: “generate icon for settings page”
Both run in parallel
Because there is no filename parameter, Codex often ends up:
Giving both images random filename
Both images saved in same folder
One agent ends up referencing/using the wrong image generated by the other agent

This creates race conditions and broken workflows in any project that uses multiple agents or parallel image generation (very common in larger codebases, design systems, game asset pipelines, etc.).

With the requested feature this would be solved instantly:

image_gen(
  prompt = "...",
  size = "1024x576",
  filename = "assets/hero-banner.png"     # ← explicit per-agent control
)

chrm52 · 3 months ago

agent in codex cli going through all the images to find the image which it requested to be generated via imagen. too much of wasted resources. easily fixed if imagen accepts prompt and filename for the generated image or let the agent know the filename of the generated image if its random.

etraut-openai contributor · 1 month ago

This feature request hasn't received enough upvotes, so it is being closed automatically. If you still feel this feature is needed, please open a new feature request with an updated title and description.