Stream Codex CLI "thinking" process in real time (like VS Code extension does)

Open 💬 2 comments Opened Oct 19, 2025 by BobbyWang0120
💡 Likely answer: A maintainer (github-actions[bot], contributor) responded on this thread — see the highlighted reply below.

What feature would you like to see?

When using the Codex CLI, I noticed that during a multi-step "thinking" process (for example, 4–5 reasoning passes), it only outputs all intermediate thinking content after the last step, just before taking a tool action. This gives users a sense of slowness, as there's no feedback until all steps are complete.

In contrast, the VS Code extension streams each thinking block to the UI, showing the first, then the second, and so on—without waiting for the entire "thinking" phase to be done. This makes the process feel faster and gives users more engagement and transparency about what Codex is working on.

I'd like the CLI experience to mirror this: output each thinking block as soon as possible, "streaming" progress just as the VS Code extension does.

Moreover, this approach gives users a greater sense of participation, instead of waiting for all thinking content to finish and then displaying it at once.

Additional information

Platform: macOS
CLI version: codex-cli 0.47.0
The VS Code extension provides a much better UX by streaming, and many users would benefit from a more responsive CLI experience too.

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2 Comments

github-actions[bot] contributor · 10 months ago

Potential duplicates detected. Please review them and close your issue if it is a duplicate.

  • #4862

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jmalmo contributor · 10 months ago

I've prototyped a fix that streams reasoning (“thinking”) live in the TUI: #6006

1) Before:

!codex-gif-buffer1

2) After (flag on): reasoning trickles in live

!codex-gif-streaming1