Feature request: show Codex session status in VS Code Sessions sidebar

Open 💬 1 comment Opened Aug 15, 2026 by qt1

Summary

The VS Code Sessions sidebar currently lists active Codex sessions, but it does not show per-session status indicators such as Working, Waiting, or similar activity states.

Expected behavior

Active Codex sessions should expose a visible status in the Sessions sidebar, similar to other agent/session experiences, so users can distinguish between:

working
waiting
idle
completed/error states

Current behavior

Codex sessions appear in the sidebar, but the list omits status details. This makes it harder to understand whether a session is actively running, waiting for input, or idle.

Environment

VS Code version: current environment
Codex extension: openai.chatgpt 26.803.61601
Platform: Linux

Notes

This appears to be a limitation in the current Codex/VS Code integration rather than a workspace-specific setting. A future fix should expose a proper status contract for chat sessions so the Sessions sidebar can render it consistently.

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1 Comment

ElenaViewSynthesis · 11 days ago

There is already a useful CLI-side workaround for part of this, and it may also point to an implementation path for the VS Code Sessions sidebar.

In an active Codex CLI session, type:

/statusline

Then use Space to toggle the fields you want to keep visible in the footer. Current Codex builds expose status-line items including the session run state, context remaining, and usage limits.

For example, a useful configuration is:

[tui]
status_line = [
  "status",
  "model-with-reasoning",
  "context-remaining",
  "five-hour-limit",
  "weekly-limit",
  "current-dir",
  "git-branch",
]

This can show information such as:

status — compact run state such as Ready / Working / Thinking
context-remaining — remaining context-window percentage
five-hour-limit — remaining usage on the primary usage-limit window
weekly-limit — remaining usage on the secondary/weekly window
model/reasoning level, current directory, and Git branch

The /statusline selection persists to tui.status_line in config.toml, so it remains visible at the bottom of the Codex TUI across prompts.

For one-off checks, /status also shows the chat/session status, context usage, and rate limits, while /usage daily, /usage weekly, and /usage cumulative provide account usage views.

If /statusline only shows fields such as model-with-reasoning, current-dir, model, reasoning, project-name, and git-branch, it is worth updating the Codex CLI and checking again, because the current CLI/docs include context and rate-limit fields as well.

Official docs:

That said, this is only a CLI workaround and does not resolve the feature request here. The VS Code Sessions sidebar still needs per-session state exposed directly in the extension UI.

A good implementation would be to reuse the same underlying run-state/status contract already represented by the TUI instead of creating a separate sidebar-only concept, then extend it to a normalized set such as:

working | thinking | waiting_for_input | idle | completed | error

Each Sessions-sidebar row could then render a small icon/badge plus optional metadata such as remaining context or usage limits. This would make parallel Codex sessions much easier to monitor without opening each session individually.