Feature Request: Real-Time Collaborative Codex Sessions

Codex Feature Requests
1

Feature Request: Real-Time Collaborative Codex Sessions

Problem

Codex sessions are generally operated by one developer at a time. However, software development frequently requires pair programming, collaborative debugging, architectural discussions, incident response, and mentoring.

Currently, a developer must share their screen or manually copy Codex prompts, responses, plans, and code changes to teammates. Other developers cannot directly participate in the same Codex session with its complete context and history.

Proposed Feature

Allow a developer to create a shared Codex session and invite authorized teammates to collaborate in real time—similar to Google Docs, but designed for software development.

Every participant should be able to see the same:

  • Codex conversation and session history

  • Repository and selected file context

  • Codex plans, actions, and progress

  • Proposed code changes and diffs

  • Terminal commands and their output

  • Test results and errors

  • Approval requests and decisions

Depending on their permissions, participants could ask Codex questions, suggest changes, edit files, comment on proposed changes, approve actions, or take control of the session.

Example Workflow

  1. A developer encounters a difficult production issue.

  2. They start a Codex session and select Share session.

  3. They invite specific teammates using their organization identities.

  4. Everyone joins the same live session and sees its complete history and repository context.

  5. Developers collaboratively prompt Codex, investigate files, review commands, and discuss proposed fixes.

  6. Codex implements the agreed solution.

  7. The team reviews the diff and tests together.

  8. Codex creates a branch, commit, or pull request containing the approved changes.

Collaboration Capabilities

  • Live participant presence and cursors

  • Shared prompts and Codex responses

  • Identification of who submitted each prompt

  • Comments on plans, responses, files, and diffs

  • Shared task lists and progress

  • Session-owner and moderator controls

  • Participant roles such as viewer, contributor, approver, and operator

  • Ability to transfer session control

  • Searchable session transcript

  • Export of decisions, prompts, commands, and changes

  • Optional voice or Slack/Teams integration

Permissions and Security

The session owner should control:

  • Who can join the session

  • Which repositories, branches, files, and directories are visible

  • Who can submit prompts or modify files

  • Who can run or approve terminal commands

  • Who can approve network access and other sensitive actions

  • Whether participants can invite other users

  • Whether secrets and sensitive files are automatically excluded

  • Whether session history is saved, exported, or deleted

For enterprise customers, collaborative sessions should respect existing organization permissions, repository access, environment policies, audit logging, data-retention rules, and security controls.

Important Design Principle

This should be more than screen sharing or collaborative text editing. All participants and Codex should operate with the same:

  • Conversation context

  • Agent state

  • Repository context

  • Working tree

  • Plan and task status

  • Command history

  • Proposed changes

  • Approval history

Codex would function as a shared member of the development team rather than an assistant connected to only one developer.

Benefits

  • Enables AI-assisted pair and mob programming

  • Speeds up debugging and production-incident resolution

  • Prevents teammates from repeatedly rebuilding the same context

  • Allows teams to review AI-generated actions before execution

  • Makes mentoring and knowledge transfer easier

  • Improves governance and accountability

  • Creates a record of how technical decisions were reached

Suggested Name

Codex Collaborative Sessions

Alternatives:

  • Codex Live Collaboration

  • Codex Shared Sessions

  • Codex Team Mode

2

The full shared-session idea is bigger than any one feature, but I think the plan needs its own collaboration surface even if Codex eventually supports shared terminals and diffs natively.

A plan in chat is hard to review precisely. Teammates need to comment on one step, see which revision they approved, and know that the agent is implementing that revision rather than a later conversational interpretation.

I’m testing that narrower workflow with Caliboard: caliboard dot pro. A coding agent sends its plan through MCP, people review it as a visual canvas, leave step-level comments, and approve a specific revision before implementation. It is still alpha, and it is not a replacement for real-time shared Codex sessions. I’d be interested in whether this plan-review boundary matches the collaboration problem you’re describing, especially for the approver/viewer roles.