codex - 💡(How to fix) Fix Improve terminal-friendly table rendering in Codex CLI TUI responses [2 comments, 2 participants]

What variant of Codex are you using?

CLI

What feature would you like to see?

Hi Codex CLI team,

I use Codex CLI heavily in a terminal environment, mainly on Windows / PowerShell. I noticed that Markdown pipe tables are not very readable in the Codex CLI TUI, especially when the response contains CJK / Chinese text or longer cell content. The alignment often becomes difficult to scan, and in some cases the table is less readable than a plain structured list.

This is a UX issue rather than a model-quality issue. Traditional database CLI tools have handled a similar problem well for years by rendering fixed-width terminal tables, for example MySQL-style text tables:

+------------+---------+------------------------------+ | Item | Status | Notes | +------------+---------+------------------------------+ | Config | passed | No native table style option | | HTML | blocked | TUI is not a browser DOM | +------------+---------+------------------------------+

Current workaround: I can instruct the model to avoid Markdown pipe tables and instead use plain text blocks with MySQL-style tables when a table is genuinely useful. This works better, but it is only a prompt-level workaround and depends on the model following the instruction consistently.

Feature request:

1. Provide a terminal-friendly table rendering option for Codex CLI responses.
2. Improve Markdown table display in the TUI, especially for wide Unicode / CJK characters and wrapped content.
3. Consider a config option such as response_table_style = "terminal" / "markdown" / "auto".
4. If possible, support simple header emphasis in terminal tables, such as bold headers or a consistent built-in visual style, without relying on raw ANSI escape sequences from the model.

Expected behavior: When the model returns structured comparisons, test summaries, field mappings, or status matrices, Codex CLI should render them in a way that is easy to read directly in the terminal, without requiring the user to open a browser or external document.

Why this matters: Structured summaries are very common in coding-agent workflows: test results, review findings, implementation plans, field ownership, API differences, and verification status. A terminal-native table style would make Codex CLI responses much easier to scan and would reduce the need for users to create custom prompt rules for output formatting.

Thanks for considering this.

Additional information

No response