Support /side command in the IDE Extension

Open 💬 2 comments Opened Jul 8, 2026 by Oops-maker

What variant of Codex are you using?

IDE Extension

What feature would you like to see?

This issue is specifically requesting /side.
/side is one of the most useful workflow features in Codex CLI.

It allows users to temporarily explore a different topic or investigate an idea without polluting the main conversation context.

For example:

Asking an unrelated conceptual question while implementing a feature
Investigating an alternative implementation
Debugging an issue that may turn out to be unrelated
Reading documentation or exploring APIs before returning to the original task

Without /side, these conversations become part of the main session, making the context larger and less focused.

Expected behavior

The VS Code extension should support /side with behavior consistent with Codex CLI.

Ideally, users should be able to:

Start a side conversation with /side
Keep the main session context unchanged
Return to the original conversation after the exploration

Maintaining feature parity between the CLI and the VS Code extension would make switching between the two much more seamless.

Thanks for considering this!

Additional information

_No response_

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2 Comments

mirumirumi · 1 month ago

I’m seeing the same behavior in the current VS Code extension.

One additional detail is that the IDE-filtered developer commands documentation currently lists /side as an available command:

https://learn.chatgpt.com/docs/developer-commands?surface=ide

However, in the VS Code extension:

/side does not appear in the slash-command menu
entering /side manually does not start a side chat
it is handled as an ordinary user message

So this appears to be both a feature-parity request and a documentation/implementation mismatch.

It would be helpful to either support /side in the IDE Extension as documented, or remove it from the IDE-filtered command list until it is available.

↓ My screenshot (in Japanese)
<img width="1598" height="553" alt="Image" src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/0acefb21-be7c-47c6-8b1e-72f96f92fb30" />

toki0328 · 19 days ago

Confirmed on Windows 11 with VS Code and OpenAI Codex extension 26.803.41515.

In an existing Codex conversation, /side is not available in the slash-command list. Right-clicking inside the Codex sidebar only shows “New Chat in Sidebar.”

A new chat or a new Codex panel is not equivalent to a temporary side conversation attached to the current thread: it does not provide the same lightweight workflow for asking a question without interrupting or polluting the main conversation.

The official IDE command documentation currently lists /side, which makes the current behavior especially confusing:
https://learn.chatgpt.com/docs/developer-commands?surface=ide

I also inspected the installed extension bundle. The side-chat implementation is included, but the /side command is registered as disabled on this surface. This appears to be an IDE-extension feature gap rather than a local configuration problem.

Please consider enabling /side in the VS Code extension for feature parity with the CLI and Codex app.