OpenAI shipped two Codex CLI releases today, 0.168.0 and 0.169.0, and both have real notes. Together they’re a bigger incremental drop than yesterday’s one-line 0.167.2.
In 0.168.0, you can turn on features.tui_workspace to keep a side conversation beside the main chat, and you can browse model providers under Sessions and set the default for new chats. There’s also support for attaching recordings on audio-capable models, an opt-in animation path for GIFs, better image previews in some terminals, and a few quality-of-life notification and resume fixes.
0.169.0 builds on that workspace: the opt-in terminal workspace now supports multiple side-chat tabs, including reopening saved local side chats after a restart. You can search older tasks from the agent command center by name, prompt preview or working directory, collapse completed turn details in the full-screen transcript, and add or edit custom model providers from the terminal, including a device-code flow for some gateways over SSH. There are also fixes around codex exec in untrusted directories, Windows sandbox path handling, and cleaner interrupts.
If you want the 0.167 picture, yesterday’s notes covered incremental tool updates on Vertex AI.
Review before you install: read the release notes yourself, back up your config, and try new versions somewhere you can afford to break first.
My take
The side-chat workspace and a real provider picker are the reasons I’d actually upgrade this week. Searchable older tasks is the other one, because “what did I ask this thing last Tuesday?” is a surprisingly common failure mode. Read the 0.169 notes on trust and codex exec before you point it at a directory you don’t already trust.
God Bless, and Use the Source!
