Welcome to the show, and thanks to Jellypod for helping make this daily show a
reality.
I'm Ethan Park, and today we are looking at the June 8, 2026 release of Codex CLI
version 0.138.0.
Maya, if you are a terminal-first developer, you've probably hit that wall where
you're working on something complex in the CLI, and suddenly you need a full GUI to
parse the layout or dive deep.
You usually have to manually copy-paste your entire prompt history.
But this new update introduces a single command that changes that: slash app.
So wait you just type slash app right into your Active Terminal session and it hands
everything off Exactly.
It triggers a native deep-link on macOS or Windows, launching Codex Desktop and
passing the entire active thread state over.
No manual copy-pasting, no lost context window, no friction.
You just transition from the terminal to the desktop app instantly.
That is huge for Terminal Flow I can't count how many times I've wanted to move to a
richer UI but dreaded rebuilding the context But wait what about local files
especially images If I've got generated assets or local mockups in my terminal
thread does the desktop handoff actually know where they are That actually ties into
the second big update in 0.138.0.
They fixed the image local file pathing.
Before this, the model didn't always have the exact local file paths of generated or
attached images exposed to it.
Now, those paths are explicitly passed in the context.
So, if your CLI session generated an asset at
`./assets/button_mock.png`, the model knows that exact path.
Ah so if you ask it to modify that image or use it in a script it's not guessing the
file name It can target assets buttonmock png precisely because
the path is part of its actual context Precisely.
It makes downstream automated edits highly reliable because the pathing is explicit,
whether you stay in the CLI or hand it off to the desktop app.
That makes sense Now let's talk about the automation side I saw they did some work
on the plugin CLI commands specifically expanding the JSON output I'm guessing this
is for the terminal power users who love scripting everything Oh,
absolutely.
If you run `codex plugin list` or inspect specific plugins now,
you can append `--json`.
This outputs highly structured data representing your active MCP servers-Model
Context Protocol servers-and default prompt catalogs.
So instead of trying to parse raw text with grep or awk to see which MCP servers are
connected you can just pipe the JSON straight into jq That is going to make custom
bootstrap scripts so much cleaner Exactly.
You can programmatically query your tool catalogs, verify which plugins are active,
and pipe them directly into other workflows.
It's a huge win for local developer environment automation.
And they also tackled some of those annoying paper cuts in the terminal UI itself
Specifically the multi line paste bug in slash goal edit I used to dread pasting
structured YAML or markdown in there because it would just submit early on the first
new line Yeah, that was incredibly frustrating.
If you had a newline in your clipboard, the buffer interpreted it as an immediate
enter keypress.
In 0.138.0, they've fixed the input listener so multiline pastes in
`/goal edit` are fully respected.
It waits for you to actually hit enter to submit.
Finally And what about the reasoning effort selection I remember some users
on specific terminal emulators or Linux setups had issues with the shortcut key
bindings there Right, the default key bindings for toggling reasoning effort would
occasionally get swallowed by the terminal multiplexer or OS-level hotkeys.
To solve this, they introduced a fallback Alt-binding.
If your terminal swallows the primary binding, you can hold Alt to force the
selection menu.
It's a small but vital safety valve for compatibility.
It shows they're really paying attention to the messy reality of different terminal
environments A great quality of life update all around Definitely.
That's Codex CLI 0.138.0.
Go grab the update and try out `/app` yourself.
Thanks for listening, and we'll catch you tomorrow.
Bye everyone