codex - 💡(How to fix) Fix Feature request: JetBrains-style Search Everywhere with categorized fuzzy results

What variant of Codex are you using?

CLI / App

What feature would you like to see?

I would like Codex to provide a unified, JetBrains-style “Search Everywhere” entry point with categorized fuzzy results.

The idea is a global search palette that can search across multiple Codex surfaces at once, while grouping results by type. This would be similar in spirit to JetBrains IDEs’ double-Shift “Search Everywhere” UI.

Possible categories:

• Commands
• Slash commands
• Files / @ file mentions
• Recent prompts / input history
• Sessions / resume targets
• Threads / chats
• MCP tools
• Settings or configuration entries
• Plugins / skills, if available

Expected behavior:

• Type partial text and fuzzy-match results across supported categories.
• Match substrings and acronym-like queries, not only prefixes.
• See results grouped by category, so the same query can show files, commands, sessions, and prompts separately.
• Navigate results with the keyboard.
• Press Enter to open, insert, resume, or run the selected item depending on its type.
• Optionally filter categories with prefixes or shortcuts, for example cmd:, file:, session:, or tabs similar to JetBrains.

Why this matters:

Codex already has several separate search or picker-like surfaces, such as slash-command completion, @ file mention search, history search, and session resume. As the product grows, remembering the exact entry point for each thing becomes harder.

A single categorized fuzzy search would make Codex much faster to use, especially for users who work across many projects, sessions, files, commands, and tools.

Additional information

This is related to #21486, which asks for fuzzy matching in Ctrl+R history search and mentions that similar behavior would be useful for other selectors.

This request is broader: it is not only asking for fuzzy matching in one selector, but for a unified categorized search experience, similar to JetBrains “Search Everywhere”.

It is also related in spirit to previous fuzzy matching requests such as #9741 and file search improvements such as #11996, but the main focus here is the unified global palette and category grouping.

A possible ranking strategy:

1. Exact matches
2. Prefix matches
3. Fuzzy / subsequence matches
4. Recently used or frequently used items

The UI could start small by aggregating existing local sources, then add more categories over time.