TODO list for long running tasks

Resolved 💬 7 comments Opened Aug 31, 2025 by pfin Closed Aug 5, 2026
💡 Likely answer: A maintainer (etraut-openai, contributor) responded on this thread — see the highlighted reply below.

What feature would you like to see?

Do we have the ability to use a TODO list to create a long running task? I notice the codex cli consistently comes back for user input for tasks. Ask it it summarize 50 files (pure summary, no opinions) and you get 5 summaries and then asking the user for input. I think claude code does this via a todo list. To accomplish a large parallel task you would initiate the long todo list and then just need to follow until all of the todo list is complete. I tried various forms of progress reports, I think this would be best managed via a todo mcp. TODO list + codex cli as an mcp should provide the ability to do longer running tasks.

Are you interested in implementing this feature?

I would implement a version of this and combine it with the ability to call codex cli mcp itself with each item to make it not just subagents but parallel subagent. With each TODO you can have a 'dependency' if the dependency is on the previous step you get sequential actions, if not you can spawn parallel subagent sessions. To interact with the codex cli mcp I would create a task decomposer and context builder. I would take feedback before implementing, thank you!

Great work team!!!

Additional information

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7 Comments

pfin · 12 months ago

This is related to

Resume/sessions: #2080, #2173, #2898
Queueing: #2617
Subagents/orchestrator: #2604, #2770, #2771

younes-io · 9 months ago

is this followed up?

khaledh · 7 months ago

The Codex VS Code extension does have a built-in todo list. It shows up automatically when the agent creates it or updates it, but there's no way to manually open it or pin it. It would be nice to expose a "Todo List" button or similar to open it.

robertmylne · 7 months ago

Todo list similar to Claude Code would be good. This keeps the tasks pinned at the bottom, which is good when tracking progress.

dhruvkej9 · 6 months ago

I think they have, I said my model to make a todo and he has made it

<img width="1581" height="247" alt="Image" src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/f516b85f-7515-4f95-9f82-9c5440555fab" />

It also updates it

<img width="999" height="223" alt="Image" src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/f65ca799-bd79-4d6d-8b50-0cdfeca247ca" />

But not visible easily have to find it where it was last updated, that needs to be fixed

etraut-openai contributor · 23 days ago

You can use /goal to specify a long-running task.

khaledh · 22 days ago
You can use /goal to specify a long-running task.

What about a visible TODO list? A goal doesn't expose that.