Add Chat Session Management: chat list, chat resume or --restore-session

[sfyr111]

Issue Description:

I’m currently working with Codex CLI and noticed that while .codex/history files are being recorded locally, there are no built-in commands to manage or resume chat sessions—unlike tools like Claude, which support -c -r to continue conversations.

Even though I’ve configured the history section in ~/.codex/config.json like this part:

history:
  maxSize: 1000
  saveHistory: true
  sensitivePatterns: []

…there’s still no way to list saved sessions or resume a previous chat. This severely limits usability and session continuity in real projects.

Strongly urge adding support for features such as:
• /chat list (or codex chat list) — to display saved session tags or session IDs
• /chat resume — to reload a previous conversation context
• Or even a global option like --resume-session or --load-history to reopen the last session

Such session persistence would allow smooth continuation across restarts, recover from crashes, and improve workflows—especially for long-running tasks or when working across multiple project sessions. Without this functionality, the history files exist but are practically unusable.

Hope this feature can be prioritized—thanks for considering!

[bachittle]

+1 for this issue. I use -c and -r all the time in claude code and was disappointed that I couldn't find it for codex.

[helLf1nGer]

I pressed Ctrl-Z by mistake, and couldn't resume the session, a disappointment

[MMZOX]

+1 for this.

[jiangying000]

when comparing the UX, codex is very far away from claude code.

I can't believe Codex is missing such a basic functionality.

[and-rewsmith]

@helLf1nGer https://www.man7.org/linux/man-pages/man1/fg.1p.html

you can just bring it back with fg

[reneric]

insane to not have a resume flag

[helLf1nGer]

@and-rewsmith, while that works in my case, the problem is inability to resume some chat. Claude Code has --resume flag, which is insanely powerful. If you worked on a feature, but want to resume some days after, you can by just resuming that chat, while Codex just is inferior at the moment

[vladislavdonchev]

I just figured out this was missing because there is also no /login feature to change your key mid-work... So I ended up losing the entire chat.

[sbaechler]

I often have the issue that my session is invalidated after I have locked my computer. I have to restart Codex to continue working.
I noticed that a session history is stored in ~/.codex/session but it seems that Codex is unable to access it.

[CzsGit]

I thought it had switched to some other method to retrieve past history. The fact that it doesn’t even provide this feature is just outrageous.