Allow /copy to target a specific assistant response by id
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.
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