Ambiguous status line labels for 5h and weekly limits make red usage indicators confusing

Resolved 💬 3 comments Opened May 23, 2026 by Roland013 Closed May 25, 2026
💡 Likely answer: A maintainer (github-actions[bot], contributor) responded on this thread — see the highlighted reply below.

Issue

The compact Codex CLI status line labels context usage differently from the 5-hour and weekly usage limits, which makes the color semantics confusing.

Example status line:

gpt-5.5 high · ~/code_project · Context 0% used · 5h 96% · weekly 99%

In this view, Context 0% used is clearly labeled as a percentage used and counts upward. However, 5h 96% and weekly 99% are unlabeled. Because many quota/status UIs show “remaining” capacity, the red color can look backwards or alarming for the wrong reason unless the user already knows these values mean “used”.

Why this is confusing

The status line mixes explicit and implicit semantics:

  • Context 0% used explicitly says used
  • 5h 96% omits whether this is used or remaining
  • weekly 99% omits whether this is used or remaining

When the 5-hour and weekly values are red, users may interpret them as “96% remaining” and “99% remaining”, which makes the red styling look wrong. If they actually mean “used”, then the red styling is correct, but the label is too compact to make that clear.

Proposed solution

Make the rate-limit status line segments use the same explicit wording as context usage.

For example:

gpt-5.5 high · ~/code_project · Context 0% used · 5h 96% used · weekly 99% used

Alternatively, if the product prefers showing remaining capacity, invert the values and label them explicitly:

gpt-5.5 high · ~/code_project · Context 0% used · 5h 4% left · weekly 1% left

The important part is that all compact status-line percentages should declare their direction: used, left, or remaining.

Expected behavior

A user should be able to understand the status line without knowing implementation details or checking /status.

The status line should make it immediately clear whether each percentage is counting upward toward exhaustion or downward toward zero.

View original on GitHub ↗

3 Comments

github-actions[bot] contributor · 3 months ago

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

  • #24080

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yui-stingray · 3 months ago

One implementation detail from openai/codex@7d47056: the compact status-line limit percentages are rendered as remaining capacity, not used capacity.

codex-rs/tui/src/chatwidget/status_controls.rs computes 100.0 - window.used_percent before formatting the status-line item, and the existing tests in codex-rs/tui/src/chatwidget/tests/status_and_layout.rs assert examples like used_percent: 94 rendering as weekly 6% and used_percent: 40 rendering as 5h 60%. The fuller status-card path also formats the same direction as % left in codex-rs/tui/src/status/rate_limits.rs.

Given that, the smallest UI fix seems to be labeling these compact status-line values as left or remaining, rather than used. That would also line up with the related usedPercent vs displayed-remaining mismatch noted in #24080.

etraut-openai contributor · 3 months ago

Good suggestion. This will be implemented in the next release.