codex - 💡(How to fix) Fix Codex App terminal tool only exposes one terminal tab despite multiple UI tabs [1 participants]

What version of the Codex App are you using (From About Codex dialog)?

26.506.31421 (2620)

What subscription do you have?

Enterprise

What platform is your computer?

macOS 26.5 (25F71), arm64

What issue are you seeing?

The Codex desktop app UI allows multiple terminal tabs, but the assistant-side terminal context only appears to expose one attached terminal snapshot for the current thread.

In a live Codex desktop thread, I had multiple terminal tabs open in the app UI. The assistant could inspect the attached terminal and identify a command that had just run in one tab. But when asked whether it could see both terminal tabs, it only saw one terminal snapshot:

cwd: <local workspace>
shell: zsh

The assistant did not receive a tab list, an active-tab identifier, or any way to switch/select another terminal tab. From the user side this is confusing because the UI suggests multiple terminal tabs exist in the same Codex app context, while the assistant can only inspect one.

What steps can reproduce the bug?

1. Open Codex desktop.
2. Open a thread with a local workspace.
3. Open a terminal tab in the Codex app UI.
4. Run a simple command, for example ls.
5. Ask the assistant what command was just run. It can read the attached terminal snapshot.
6. Open a second terminal tab in the Codex app UI.
7. Ask the assistant whether it can see both terminal tabs.

Observed result:

• The assistant only sees one terminal snapshot for the thread.
• It cannot enumerate terminal tabs.
• It has no visible way to select or inspect the second terminal tab.

What is the expected behavior?

One of these should be true:

1. The assistant can enumerate and inspect all terminal tabs attached to the current Codex desktop thread.
2. The assistant can see which terminal tab is currently attached and can switch/select another tab if the user asks.
3. The UI clearly communicates that only one terminal tab is attached to assistant context, so users do not expect the assistant to see the others.

Additional information

This may be related to terminal inventory/process ownership work discussed in #20907, but this report is narrower: terminal tabs visible in the current app UI are not all visible through assistant terminal context.

Codex CLI version on the same machine:

codex-cli 0.125.0