Windows: Open/attach background terminal session in a new Windows Terminal tab (PowerShell-friendly) #8650

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 (Background Terminal Sessions #3968) — core capability request.
• Background task management / TUI (Ctrl+B) proposal (Background task management for codex - seeking approval to submit PR #6404)
• First-class background job management request (Feature request: First-class background job management in Codex CLI #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