Pasture

Overview

Pasture is a GUI for Codex built for developers who want more control than a TUI. Branch conversations, annotate message/code output like a PR, and use Handoff and Read Thread to keep threads short and focused.

Getting Started

Download the latest release from the Releases page.

First, authenticate via the Codex CLI:

npm install -g @openai/codex
# or
brew install --cask codex

Run codex once and log in with your API key or ChatGPT account. After that, you're all set.

Key Features

Message Editing & Conversation Branching

Edit any message to fork the conversation into a new branch. Pasture maintains a tree of conversation versions, letting you explore different approaches without losing the previous conversation. Use the version selector below each edited message to navigate between branches.

Comment on Messages

The GPT-5.* family of models produce excellent plans. Often times, these plans are very long- which I've found frustrating to construct replies to in order to provide feedback and further steer the plan.

Pasture allows you to highlight portions of a response and add comments. This let's you build up a larger "feedback message". Clicking Insert review as message provides you with a formatted message such as,

I have a few comments on your previous response:
- Message snippet: "..."
  Comment 1: "..."
- Message snippet: "..."
  Comment 2: "..."

Please address each comment before continuing.

Comment on Files

Comment on diffs of the agent's activity, just like a GitHub PR. Hover over any line, click the plus, and add your feedback. When you hit "Submit", it consolidates everything into a single message for the agent:

Here is my consolidated review of turn 1:
- apps/desktop/src/approvals/__tests__/event-utils.test.ts (line 45): fix this
    Context: +          update: { unified_diff: '--- a\n+++ b', move_path: null },

Please address each comment before continuing.

I've found this useful for batching up changes after a turn instead of stopping the agent every time I spot something. You can also compare against previous turns—like Gerrit patchsets—rather than just the base workspace.

Handoff

Modeled after Amp's handoff feature, /handoff extracts the relevant context from the current thread based on your goal for the next thread. Under the hood, it uses the latest GPT-5.x model to produce a prompt and pre-fill the composer with it in the new thread, so that you can review and edit it before sending- just like in Amp.

read_thread Tool

Pasture's fork of Codex adds a read_thread tool modeled again after Amp's version of it. This tool allows the agent to ask questions about the referenced thread- allowing it to pull additional context it needs. It pairs excellently with the /handoff feature.

Sharing

Click "Share" in the top bar to generate a public link (https://pasture.dev/s/$id) of your transcript. The web viewer includes the full conversation, code diffs, and rich OpenGraph metadata for clean previews on social platforms.

Keyboard Shortcuts

Shortcut	Action
⌘B	Toggle workspace sidebar
⌘N	New thread
⌘P	Open thread switcher
Ctrl+Tab / Ctrl+Shift+Tab	Cycle recent conversations
⌘,	Open workspace settings
⌘K	Toggle developer command menu
Esc	Interrupt active turn / close overlays

Nice-to-Knows

• Generated session titles: Pasture generates titles based on your first user message, but only if no title exists.
• Session management: The sidebar only displays active/loaded sessions. Resume previous sessions via "Open" or ⌘P. Use Ctrl+Tab for a recent‑conversation switcher overlay.
• Queued messages: Start a new prompt while a turn is running—it queues automatically. Review or cancel queued messages in the status indicator.
• Images in transcript: Pasted images appear as attachments in the composer and render as view-image tool cells in the transcript with full metadata.
• Auto‑updates: Pasture checks for updates on startup and via the native menu, with an in‑app dialog for seamless upgrades.

Codex behavior differences in our fork

In addition to adding some new tasks and tools, here's a running a list of the behavioral changes in our fork of Codex:

• The rollout recorder persists many more event types. This allows resumed sessions to display changed files and see the output of commands / patches in the transcript.

Current Limitations

Here's what's not built yet:

• MCP server configuration: While there's no UI for it in Pasture, adding them to your Codex config.toml should let you use MCP servers.
• Custom models/APIs: Codex supports various models and providers, but I haven't exposed that in the UI yet.

If you hit weird behavior, please file a bug report with your config.toml so I can see what needs to be implemented.

Development

Prerequisites

1. Node.js 22 or newer
2. Rust toolchain (Nightly channel, see rust-toolchain.toml)
3. Tauri dependencies for your platform (see tauri.app/v2/guides/prerequisites)

Installation

npm install

Development Commands

Command	Description
pnpm run dev	Launches Vite + Tauri dev mode with hot reload
pnpm run dev:web	Runs only the web viewer
pnpm run build	Builds production desktop app
pnpm run package	Creates distributable packages
pnpm run format:fix	Formats TypeScript, React, and Markdown
pnpm run format:rust	Formats Rust sources
pnpm run lint	ESLint for TypeScript/React
pnpm run typecheck	TypeScript compilation check
pnpm run test	Vitest unit and integration suite

Contributing

While contributions are welcome, please open a discussion for new features—I'm keeping the core experience opinionated. Bugfixes are always welcome.

License

Copyright © Anthony Crognale.

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0.