Add automatic snapshots of previous states so that you can easily revert to any of them at any time (you may also include a brief description of the changes made), even those from a long time ago. The advantage is that you can then easily restore a stable state or even save a specific state for future use.
The memory tag is what drew my attention and prompted this reply.
Are you referring to the idea that prior states—such as earlier conversations or code—contain useful context that is not available in the current session, and that access to this context would improve the current interaction?
The reason I ask is that developers of OpenAI Codex have been actively working to improve how memory functions, both automatically and through user input (see: Code search results · GitHub). Until recently, much of this work was not publicly announced, but the following announcement signals these developments:
We’re also releasing a preview of memory, which allows Codex to remember useful context from previous experience, including personal preferences, corrections, and information that took time to gather. This helps future tasks complete faster and to a level of quality previously only possible through extensive custom instructions.
No, I was referring specifically to a full backup of the actions taken for each completed task. That way, everything can be restored exactly as it was before, not just to the previous version.
So you want to go back to the state of both the Codex conversation and the source code at some point.
IIRC Codex had this feature and it was removed because not many used it and it was causing the OpenAI Codex staff some hardship to maintain and work correctly.
Best guess on where I saw this noted was in the Codex issues.
This is a common request, here is one of the issues I quickly found.
Am I reading this correctly, you want to restore the entire computer state to some earlier time?
That is a feature that I have used for years and currently do using Windows Hyper-V but it is not something I would use for my everyday machine. I do create such virtual machines from time to time for development work, especially for testing out install code and instructions as to test it properly one has to have a clean machine with nothing installed to find all of the missing dependencies.
The point is that we need a log of every action, both in programming and in changes made to the computer, perhaps even with mandatory logging of a specific state.
Your idea may already exist, I just don’t know the exact details enough to possibly offer a proper solution.
For example, with regular Codex, not an app, many users quickly realized that there was much information of value in the previous conversations. As such many of us found the local files where such was being stored and started creating daemons to archive the data.
If a Codex app also stores such information locally then that could be a path to solving your need.
On Windows for Codex, not the app, the parent path for such is %USERPROFILE%\.codex
Another idea that might be needed is time-travel data structures. If you know about SQL databases and how transactions record the changes for reply in a journal file in case of a failure, this is along the same lines of thought.
I have not created a Codex App yet, but I would think that would be the responsibility of the Codex App developer. However, it would be a nice enhancement of the Codex App or such to offer a built-in way to do so.
Consider searching the OpenAI GitHub Codex issues tab for enhancement for what you need and if you find it, give the topic a thumbs up, if you do not find what you need then consider creating a new issue with the label enhancement.
I manually looked for an enhancement based on what I think you need and this enhancement reqeust might be of interest to you.
In looking at a recent Codex commit this could be related, will have to keep an eye on it to see what becomes of the sequence noted in the commit.
