Windows: Open/attach background terminal session in a new Windows Terminal tab (PowerShell-friendly)

Resolved 💬 2 comments Opened Jan 1, 2026 by SlipstreamAI Closed Feb 23, 2026

What feature would you like to see?

Summary

When Codex runs a long-lived/background terminal session, add a way to view/attach it in a separate terminal tab (or pane) in Windows Terminal so I can keep my main Codex chat flow in one tab while watching logs/output in another.

Problem / Motivation

Background terminal sessions are most useful when:

  • I can keep working in the main Codex session
  • while simultaneously watching build/test/dev-server logs
  • without copy/pasting commands or losing context

Today, background execution is trending toward being possible (and there are active discussions/PRs about background job management),
but there’s no first-class “show this background session in another tab/pane” workflow for Windows users.

Related issues

  • Background Terminal Sessions (#3968) — core capability request.
  • Background task management / TUI (Ctrl+B) proposal (#6404)
  • First-class background job management request (#7986)

Proposed solution

1) Introduce an “attach/view” command

Add a stable way to attach to a running background terminal session:

  • codex bg list
  • codex bg attach <session_id> (stream output + allow interaction if supported)
  • codex bg logs <session_id> --follow (read-only mode is fine as a v1)

2) Windows Terminal integration: open in new tab/pane

Add a convenience flag that launches the viewer in a new Windows Terminal tab:

  • codex bg attach <id> --new-tab
  • (optional) --split-pane for a side-by-side view

Implementation idea (Windows-only):

  • Use wt to open a new tab/pane targeting the current window (wt -w 0 new-tab ... / split-pane ...)
  • Run codex bg attach <id> (or codex bg logs <id> --follow) inside that tab.

Windows Terminal supports scripted tab/pane creation via wt and commands like new-tab / split-pane.

3) UX/guardrails

  • If Windows Terminal isn’t available, fall back to:
  • printing a one-liner the user can run, or
  • opening a new console window with the same command
  • If interactive attach is hard, ship v1 as logs-only follow.

Acceptance criteria

  • Can start background sessions and list them (id/name/status) using /ps more dynamically.
  • Can attach or follow logs for a specific session
  • On Windows Terminal: --new-tab opens a new tab running the attach/log command
  • Clear docs + examples for PowerShell users
  • Stays open but finishes with a prompt that asks permission before closing the tab.

Additional information

_No response_

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