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Feature Request: Preserve Interim Working Updates / Reasoning Summary in Chat History
It would be useful if Codex/ChatGPT preserved the assistant’s interim working updates in a more accessible way after a task completes.
During longer coding/debugging sessions, the assistant often provides short “working” updates that explain what it is checking, what it learned, why it changed direction, and what it plans to try next. These updates are very helpful for understanding the path taken, especially when troubleshooting build/configuration issues.
Requested behavior:
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Keep interim working updates visible and easy to refer back to.
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Optionally provide a collapsible “Work Log” or “Process Summary” section after completion.
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Include key commands attempted, failures encountered, pivots made, and verification results.
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Distinguish this from private hidden reasoning; the useful part is the human-readable progress trail and decision log.
Why this matters:
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Helps users learn from the debugging process.
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Makes long technical sessions easier to audit later.
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Reduces the need to ask “what happened while you were working?”
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Helps maintainers understand why a solution was chosen.
Example use case:
A DocFX metadata generation issue appeared to hang when pointed at a .csproj. The assistant tried metadata directly, observed the behavior, changed direction to compile first with MSBuild, then configured DocFX to use the generated .exe/.xml. The interim updates made that troubleshooting path much easier to follow.