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TUI shortcut to jump between user prompts in the transcript #21732
Description
What feature would you like to see?
Add keyboard shortcuts in the Codex CLI TUI to jump between user prompt blocks in the current transcript, so users can quickly revisit the assistant output that followed a previous prompt.
For example:
- Jump to previous user prompt:
Alt+Upor another available shortcut - Jump to next user prompt:
Alt+Downor another available shortcut - Keep the selected prompt and the assistant output immediately below it visible
- Ideally support repeated jumps through the whole visible/current session transcript
Why is this useful?
In longer Codex CLI sessions, it is common to ask several prompts and later want to review the output underneath one of the recent prompts. Today, this usually requires manual terminal scrollback or text search. That works, but it is slow and imprecise when the transcript is long or when prompts have similar wording.
Prompt-to-prompt navigation would make it much easier to inspect earlier answers, compare outputs from recent prompts, and recover context without leaving the keyboard.
Related but different issues
This overlaps with existing navigation/history requests, but I think it is a distinct workflow:
- interactive history search #2622 asks for interactive reverse search through prompt history, mainly to find and reuse previous prompts.
- Feature: Rust Codex CLI: Add in-TUI scroll-navigation (PageUp/PageDown, Home/End), vertical scroll-bar drag-and-drop and a “no-borders” flag #1064 asked for broader in-TUI scroll navigation such as PageUp/PageDown and Home/End.
- --no-alt-screen still does not preserve scrollback in xterm.js-based terminals (VS Code integrated terminal reproduces)` #14277 discusses scrollback preservation with
--no-alt-screenin xterm.js-based terminals.
This request is specifically about navigating between user prompt anchors inside the current Codex CLI transcript, with the goal of quickly reaching the assistant output under each prompt.
Suggested UX
One possible behavior:
- User presses the shortcut for previous prompt.
- The TUI scroll position moves to the previous user prompt block.
- The prompt is placed near the top of the viewport, leaving the following assistant output visible below it.
- Repeating the shortcut moves to older prompts; the opposite shortcut moves forward again.
Are you interested in implementing this feature?
No, but I would be happy to test and provide feedback.
Activity
github-actions commentedon May 8, 2026
Potential duplicates detected. Please review them and close your issue if it is a duplicate.
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bberenberg commentedon May 13, 2026
@etraut-openai would the team be open to accepting an external contribution for this? I regularly have 30+ minute hands off sessions and figuring out the scroll back point has been frustrating.
etraut-openai commentedon May 13, 2026
@bberenberg, we generally prioritize enhancement requests based on community input (upvotes). We don't accept PRs from external sources for reasons explained here.
PaulRBerg commentedon Jul 17, 2026
This would make a material difference for me. The current
Ctrl+B/Shift+Spacepage-up behavior in the transcript overlay no longer scales well to modern Codex sessions. As the models have become more capable, and especially with higher-effort modes such as Ultra, individual turns can produce much longer responses and tool traces. Reaching the response associated with my previous prompt can require paging through many screens.Page-based movement isn't a useful substitute for prompt-anchor navigation in that workflow. A previous/next user-prompt action would provide a stable semantic navigation point regardless of how much output each turn contains, and would make reviewing long-running sessions significantly faster.
bhavyashah commentedon Jul 21, 2026
@etraut-openai As a blind, keyboard-only screen reader user, this feature would be very helpful. I have no way to eyeball the end of a response and start of a prompt, and the existing units of navigation don't allow me to efficiently sift through lengthy turns.
Coiggahou2002 commentedon Aug 10, 2026
I inspected the current
mainimplementation (at680934adc4). Most of the required machinery now exists, although it is currently coupled to the edit/backtrack flow.Relevant existing pieces:
app_backtrack.rsalready indexesUserHistoryCellentries and steps backward/forward through user prompts.TranscriptOverlay::set_highlight_cellcan identify a selected cell.PagerView::scroll_chunk_into_viewalready performs width-aware scrolling after render, when wrapped heights are known.I would propose a separate, non-destructive navigation state rather than reusing
BacktrackState, because prompt review must not imply editing or forking:TranscriptOverlay;Tests would cover repeated backward/forward traversal, boundaries, wrapped prompts, pagination index remapping, and a transcript snapshot showing the prompt at the top with following output visible.
I would keep mouse hover and native terminal scrollback out of this first change: Codex currently discards mouse events, while the
Ctrl+Toverlay already owns keyboard navigation deterministically.@fcoury, if this direction matches the intended UX, would you be open to inviting an external PR?