Codex Mobile Remote: add a workspace file editor for connected hosts
What variant of Codex are you using?
ChatGPT mobile app / Codex Remote connected to a Codex App host. The request
applies to iOS and Android clients with macOS, Windows, or SSH hosts.
What feature would you like to see?
Please add a first-class workspace file editor to Codex Mobile Remote.
Mobile users can supervise tasks, review diffs, and ask Codex to modify files,
but they cannot directly open a text or code file, make a small deterministic
edit, review the resulting diff, and save it to the connected host. This makes
simple changes unnecessarily dependent on an agent turn, SSH/SFTP, or an
external file-transfer service.
Requested behavior:
- Browse and search files within the active project or worktree.
- Open common text, code, configuration, and Markdown files with syntax
highlighting and line numbers.
- Edit existing files and create new text files.
- Preview the exact diff before saving.
- Save through the connected host filesystem while respecting writable roots,
sandbox restrictions, file permissions, and workspace policy.
- Preserve the file's encoding and line endings when possible.
- Detect concurrent host-side changes and offer reload, compare, or explicit
overwrite rather than silently losing either version.
- Clearly distinguish user-authored edits from agent-authored changes.
- Avoid automatically adding edited file contents to model context unless the
user explicitly sends or references them.
- Warn before opening or saving sensitive, hidden, gitignored, or
permission-restricted files, without displaying their contents in logs or
telemetry.
- Report actionable errors when the host is offline or a policy blocks the
operation.
Why this is useful
A common situation is that the connected computer is awake but locked and the
user notices a typo, needs to update a small configuration file, or wants to add
a short instruction while away from the computer. Today the alternatives are
to describe the exact edit to Codex, paste content into chat, configure remote
shell access, or transfer a replacement file through another service.
A small host-backed editor would reduce latency and token usage, give users
precise control over tiny edits, and avoid unsafe workarounds such as public
share links for local configuration files.
Additional information
The Remote Connections documentation describes reviewing outputs and diffs but
does not describe direct workspace editing from mobile:
Related but different requests:
- #26392 requests a richer Markdown file viewer on mobile.
- #22736 requests uploading images from Codex Mobile.
This request is specifically for direct editing and saving of host workspace
files from the mobile client.