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Add Claude Code-style rewind/remind with file-state-safe branching #22100

@ZhihaoPlus

Description

@ZhihaoPlus

What variant of Codex are you using?

app

What feature would you like to see?

Codex needs a Claude Code-style rewind/remind feature for long coding sessions.

Current behavior is confusing:

  • Branching locally from an earlier message only rewinds the conversation, not the file state.
  • This can create an old-context/new-files mismatch.
  • The agent may continue from an earlier conversation point while the local workspace already contains later changes.
  • That can lead to conflicting edits or unsafe assumptions.
  • Branching into a new worktree is safer, but it requires users to understand Git worktrees, merge, cherry-pick, cleanup, and branch management.

Requested feature:

Please add a higher-level rewind/remind UX that lets users safely go back to an earlier message and continue from there.

Ideally, Codex should support:

  • rewind/branch from a selected message
  • clear distinction between "discussion-only branch" and "code branch"
  • automatic isolated worktree creation for code branches
  • file-state safety checks when branching locally
  • diff preview before accepting branch results
  • simple accept/discard/cleanup flow
  • an easy way to merge or cherry-pick accepted changes back into the original workspace

This would combine Claude Code's intuitive "regret and retry" workflow with Codex's stronger engineering isolation model.

Additional information

This matters especially for large projects and long-running sessions.

When a user regrets the last several turns, they often want to return to an earlier point and explore another direction. Today, Codex exposes lower-level choices like local branching or worktrees, but the UX is hard to reason about.

A safer model could be:

  1. Discussion branch: conversation only; warn before allowing file edits.
  2. Safe code branch: create a worktree from the selected point.
  3. Accept result: show diff and let the user merge/cherry-pick selected changes.
  4. Discard result: clean up the branch/worktree.

The key issue is that conversation history and file state should not silently diverge.

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    appIssues related to the Codex desktop appenhancementNew feature or requestsessionIssues involving session (thread) management, resuming, forking, naming, archiving

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