Codex Mission Control

Codex Mission Control is a local VS Code dashboard for OpenAI Codex sessions, parent chats, and subagents.

The first version intentionally reads Codex JSONL session files instead of requiring native SQLite bindings. That makes the extension easier to package and more likely to work on any Windows machine where Codex writes to %USERPROFILE%\.codex.

What it shows

Parent chats as pipeline columns.
Named subagents grouped under each parent chat.
Active, idle, done, error, and archived states.
Latest message, workspace, Git branch, model/provider, token count, and latest activity.
Diagnostics for Codex home, session folder, session index, and state database.

Data sources

By default the extension resolves Codex home in this order:

codexMissionControl.codexHome VS Code setting.
CODEX_HOME environment variable.
%USERPROFILE%\.codex on Windows, or ~/.codex elsewhere.

The MVP reads:

.codex/sessions/**/*.jsonl
.codex/archived_sessions/*.jsonl
.codex/session_index.jsonl for renamed chat titles
.codex/state_5.sqlite for diagnostics only

A later version can use state_5.sqlite to enrich parent/child status from thread_spawn_edges and threads.

Install from source

git clone https://github.com/kolling88/codex_mission_control.git
cd codex_mission_control
npm install
npm run package
code --install-extension .\codex-mission-control-0.1.0.vsix

Then open VS Code and run:

Codex Mission Control: Open Dashboard

Useful settings

{
  "codexMissionControl.codexHome": "",
  "codexMissionControl.refreshIntervalMs": 2000,
  "codexMissionControl.maxSessions": 300,
  "codexMissionControl.activeThresholdMinutes": 10,
  "codexMissionControl.showPreview": true
}

Leave codexMissionControl.codexHome empty unless Codex uses a non-standard directory.

Privacy

The extension reads local Codex files from your machine. It does not send transcripts anywhere. Preview text is shown only inside the local VS Code webview and can be disabled with codexMissionControl.showPreview.

Build

npm install
npm run compile
npm run package

GitHub Actions also builds a .vsix artifact on push and pull request.