How to interrupt a running Codex CLI turn with Enter, Tab and /side

Since Codex CLI 0.163.0 (October 15), a message you send while Codex is still answering lands in that turn right away. There are four ways to cut in, each for a different job.

1. To change the direction of what it's doing now, type a message and press Enter. The new instruction is injected into the current turn. If you interrupt the turn, any running Code Mode cells and the tool calls nested in them stop too.
2. To leave the current work alone and line something up for the next turn, press Tab. You can queue a prompt, a slash command, or a shell command starting with !. A queued slash command is parsed at the moment it runs.
3. For a quick question that shouldn't clutter the main transcript, open /side. You can put the question on the same line.

/side Just tell me whether this plan has an obvious risk

The side chat keeps its own transcript, and the screen keeps showing whether the main chat is still running. You can't open /side inside another side chat or in review mode. Since 0.163.0, /side also returns you to an existing side conversation after you've switched threads.

1. To edit an earlier message and continue from there, press Esc twice with an empty composer. Codex lets you edit the previous user message and forks the chat from that point.

If you're below 0.163.0, update first.

npm install -g @openai/codex@0.163.0