Non-standard REPL makes codex difficult to use

[ddanieli]

Maybe I'm the only one as I don't see a prior Discussion, Issue or Pull Request generated. 🤷‍♂️

I'm on a Mac with zsh and the Codex REPL seems non-standard making it abnormally difficult to use.

This is just what I've noticed in the short time using it:

• Jump word is Ctrl+[Left|Right]Arrow instead of the more common Option+[Left|Right]Arrow.
• Ctrl+E opens the vi-like editor whereas every other REPL I've ever used does a "Jump to EOL".
• Esc+B, Esc+Delete do not work but they don't work in Claude Code either.
• Shift+Enter does not work (although it says that under the edit box). This is understandable for a shell but the UI shouldn't say it if it doesn't work.

Note: the standard node REPL is exactly what I want so I don't know why Codex is doing things differently.

Codex found this in the Codex code:

    codex
    I dug through the CLI entry‑point and saw that Codex doesn’t spin up Node’s built‑in repl or even use the bare readline module at all. Instead it renders a React‑based
    terminal UI via the Ink framework (you’ll see import { render } from "ink" in src/cli.tsx), with most of the input widgets built on:

      • Ink itself ("ink": "^5.x")
      • A vendored copy of the community “ink‑text‑input” component (in src/components/vendor/ink-text-input.tsx)
      • Some higher‑level bits from @inkjs/ui (e.g. the ConfirmInput in src/app.tsx)

    So the “REPL” you’re seeing is actually a custom Ink/React terminal UI, not the stock node/zsh one.

At this point, unless I immediately go to the vi editor (via Ctrl+E) where keybinding and navigation are consistent, I cannot use Codex.

[greggh]

For me Codex seems unusable. I have happily used Claude Code, Goose, Plandex, Warp Terminal, and Aider. Every one of them has a good interface that is easily understood and generally does what you expect it to with keymaps. Codex is barely functional for me. The amount of times it has just gone haywire, the screen looking crazy, command output not showing up, keys not doing anything you expect them to, ugh.

There are so many good examples of command line interfaces, be it an REPL or a full TUI like oterm. I have no idea why this team used the tools or frameworks they did.

Within 30 minutes of installing and attemptingt to use Codex it had gotten "429" errors and exited (losing all context), twice. The command.stdout that showed up on my screen, one out of three showed no output, just sat there. Resizing the window or moving it to another monitor moved the input box half way up the window and drew all of the lines in a mess where I had no idea where the cursor was on my screen.