Codex Stash

A quiet inbox for the prompts you think of while Codex is working.
Capture now. Decide later.

Codex Stash is a small VS Code extension inspired by the session-level “stash” proposal for Codex. It gives follow-up ideas a temporary home beside your code, so you can keep reviewing and return to each question at the right moment.

Stash is not a queue. Nothing is sent automatically. Every prompt waits for an explicit developer action.

Why Stash?

While Codex is working, useful thoughts arrive at inconvenient times:

“Why is this method needed?”
“Ask Codex to check the error path next.”
“Compare this with @InventoryService.php when the current task is done.”

These ideas belong to the current review rather than to a permanent project backlog. Stash keeps them close, editable, mergeable, and ready when you are.

Queue, Steer, or Stash?

The original Codex proposal separates three different follow-up workflows:

Workflow	What happens	When to use it
Queue	The prompt is submitted automatically after the current task.	You already know Codex should run it next.
Steer	The prompt is sent immediately and may interrupt or redirect the current task.	The current direction needs to change now.
Stash	The prompt waits until you explicitly send, edit, merge, restore, or delete it.	You want to decide later.

Codex Stash brings the third workflow into VS Code as an independent extension, alongside Codex’s native queue and steer behavior.

The workflow

Open Stash in the VS Code Activity Bar.
Write a prompt in the composer. Use @ to reference workspace files.
Click Stash and return to your work. The prompt is saved in the current workspace.
Edit, merge, or delete prompts as your review evolves.
When ready, choose Send. The prompt is inserted into the selected Codex TUI terminal and then moved to Sent archive.

The archive keeps the same prompt identity and usage history. Restore a sent prompt to bring it back to the active list, or permanently delete it when it is no longer useful.

Sending to Codex

The extension uses the integrated terminal as the handoff point to the Codex TUI. This keeps the visible terminal session in the developer’s control and avoids coupling the extension to a particular Codex thread or app-server writer.

When you send a prompt:

You choose the terminal where the Codex TUI is open.
Stash writes the prompt exactly as authored, including line breaks and indentation.
It sends the TUI’s queue-path key. When Codex is idle, the TUI can submit the prompt; while a turn is active, it can keep the prompt queued rather than steering the current work.
The prompt is archived after the terminal write succeeds.

In practice, this is a controlled copy/paste into the terminal selected by you. The prompt remains yours until you decide to send it.

Install from a VSIX

Codex Stash is currently distributed as a local VSIX rather than through the Marketplace.

code --install-extension ./codex-stash-1.0.0.vsix --force

After installation, reload VS Code if prompted and open the Stash Activity Bar view.

Requirements

VS Code 1.90 or later.
A workspace folder, because prompts are stored in workspace storage.
An integrated VS Code terminal with the Codex TUI running when you send a prompt.

The terminal choice stays explicit because a VS Code workspace can contain several terminals at once.

License

MIT