Ambiguous status line labels for 5h and weekly limits make red usage indicators confusing
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% usedexplicitly saysused5h 96%omits whether this is used or remainingweekly 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.
3 Comments
Potential duplicates detected. Please review them and close your issue if it is a duplicate.
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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.rscomputes100.0 - window.used_percentbefore formatting the status-line item, and the existing tests incodex-rs/tui/src/chatwidget/tests/status_and_layout.rsassert examples likeused_percent: 94rendering asweekly 6%andused_percent: 40rendering as5h 60%. The fuller status-card path also formats the same direction as% leftincodex-rs/tui/src/status/rate_limits.rs.Given that, the smallest UI fix seems to be labeling these compact status-line values as
leftorremaining, rather thanused. That would also line up with the relatedusedPercentvs displayed-remaining mismatch noted in #24080.Good suggestion. This will be implemented in the next release.