### What problem are you trying to solve? In the Codex CLI TUI, `/copy` currently copies the latest assistant response as markdown. That is useful, but it is hard to copy an earlier assistant response cleanly. The current workaround is either: - ask Codex to repeat the earlier answer and then run `/copy`, which burns tokens and adds friction; - manually select text in the terminal, which often captures extra indentation, soft-wrap artifacts, or surrounding TUI formatting. This is especially

Allow /copy to target a specific assistant response by id

Open 💬 4 comments Opened May 22, 2026 by michaelbrylevskii

What problem are you trying to solve?

In the Codex CLI TUI, /copy currently copies the latest assistant response as markdown. That is useful, but it is hard to copy an earlier assistant response cleanly.

The current workaround is either:

ask Codex to repeat the earlier answer and then run /copy, which burns tokens and adds friction;
manually select text in the terminal, which often captures extra indentation, soft-wrap artifacts, or surrounding TUI formatting.

This is especially painful when copying markdown/code blocks from previous answers into chats, tickets, docs, or issue comments.

Related broader request: #2880. This issue is a narrower request for addressable copy of a specific message.

Proposed solution

Add a way for /copy to target a specific assistant response.

Possible command shapes:

/copy          # current behavior: copy latest assistant response
/copy 12       # copy assistant response with id 12
/copy a12      # copy assistant response with explicit assistant-message id
/copy last-2   # copy the previous assistant response

The TUI could expose compact ids for assistant messages, for example:

assistant #42
...

Alternatively, ids could stay out of the main transcript and be discoverable through /history or message metadata.

Why this would help

This would make /copy useful for more than the latest response while preserving clean markdown output and avoiding terminal-selection artifacts.

View original on GitHub ↗

4 Comments

yui-stingray · 3 months ago

One implementation note from current main: the TUI already keeps a bounded copy history, not only a single last-response string.

codex-rs/tui/src/chatwidget.rs sets MAX_AGENT_COPY_HISTORY to 32.
codex-rs/tui/src/chatwidget/transcript.rs stores agent_turn_markdowns keyed by visible user-turn count.
/copy is still described as "copy last response as markdown" in codex-rs/tui/src/slash_command.rs, and dispatches to copy_last_agent_markdown() in codex-rs/tui/src/chatwidget/slash_dispatch.rs.

So this may not require inventing persistence for older responses from scratch. The missing piece appears to be an addressable selector/argument path plus user-visible labels or metadata for the retained responses.

nullbio · 3 months ago

We need the ability to copy individual commands/blocks.

Like if Codex is giving me a bunch of commands to run in a terminal, it should be easy to copy them.

michaelbrylevskii · 1 month ago

Any updates?

bendavis78 · 14 days ago

This would be a great addition to bring Codex in line with most other coding agents.