Shell mode feels like a misfeature in the Codex CLI (although maybe not elsewhere).
Resolved 💬 2 comments Opened May 27, 2026 by JeffreyBenjaminBrown Closed May 27, 2026
💡 Likely answer: A maintainer (etraut-openai, 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 "feature" i would like is to never be bothered by accidentally triggering shell mode in the Codex CLI. Anyone who is using the CLI already knows how to open a shell and use it; it seems bonkers to use the Codex CLI for shell work, cluttering your conversation history and surely having a worse experience than you would in a real shell.
I can imagine shell mode being useful form other interfaces, but in the CLI, I can't.
Additional information
_No response_
2 Comments
Shell mode was a highly-requested feature. It's not the same as running a shell command in a separate terminal because it makes the output visible to the agent.
Ah. Sorry for the noise and thanks for responding fast.