threads / projects in sidebar missing

[jojopirker]

What version of the Codex App are you using (From “About Codex” dialog)?

26.415.40636 (1799)

What subscription do you have?

Pro

What platform is your computer?

Darwin 24.6.0 arm64 arm

What issue are you seeing?

Hi,
When opening the codex app, I am not seeing all my threads in my projects. Some look like the don't have any threads:

After debugging with codex, I found out that the threads are still saved locally in the SQLite database. The bug is in the codex desktop app. Since the thread/list initially only loads the last 50 conversations, some conversations seem to be missing.

Maybe this limit can be increased significantly or the list query could fetch the last n items for each project.

I patched the app and intercepted the call to do the intelligent fetching. This fixes it.

What steps can reproduce the bug?

Create 2 projects. Start a thread in the first project. Then start 50 new threads in the second project. Restart the app. The thread in the first project should now not be visible.

What is the expected behavior?

Show the latest conversations for each project

Additional information

Summary written by codex (including my local patch to fix it)

codex-desktop-sidebar-history-issue.md

[github-actions]

Potential duplicates detected. Please review them and close your issue if it is a duplicate.

• Mac app hides older local conversations after update because bogus root-level status sessions flood recent local history #18364
• Windows app: older local threads disappear from sidebar and sidebar search after restart while still present on disk #17540
• Threads keep disappearing from the sidebar even with "All chats" selected #17970
• Multiple sidebar bugs after workspace directory migration: "56 years ago" timestamps, missing threads, threads vanish on click (macOS) #17317
• Worktree conversation remains listed in Settings but disappears from sidebar thread list #16811

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[jojopirker]

After renaming threads in my patched app, they also show up in the original app.
#17540 might be related or a duplicate, but it does not mention the actual problem (though the issues reported by the users seem similar)
#18364 also mentions not seeing conversations but I'm not sure if this is just there threads/list call or another bug

[jojopirker]

TLDR what codex did to fix it:

Patched the desktop app’s bundled codex app-server launcher to intercept the initial sidebar thread/list(limit: 50, cursor: null, archived: false) request, fan it out into thread/list(cwd=..., limit=20) calls for each saved workspace root, merge and dedupe the results, and return that combined project-balanced feed back to the existing UI.

The attached markdown is a more detailed description including the patch itself.
codex-app-server-intercept-patch.md

[jojopirker]

This now also removed the projects. After restarting the app multiple projects are gone. Using the cli in the correct folders, I still can find the conversations using codex resume

[Dailin521]

I can confirm this is reproducible when the affected project's threads are present in the local thread store but are outside the first global recent page.

Additional diagnostics from a Windows Desktop case:

• thread/list via the app-server can return the missing project threads when queried directly with the matching cwd.
• The CLI resume picker can also see/resume the same threads.
• The Desktop project sidebar can still render the project as having no chats when none of that project's threads are in the initial global recent page.
• In the installed Desktop webview bundle, the recent conversation store fetches the first page with listRecentThreads({ limit: 50 * pageCount, cursor: null }), then subsequent pages with limit: 50. The request is a global thread/list request with modelProviders: null, archived: false, and no project cwd filter.

This points to a Desktop sidebar hydration issue rather than data loss or an app-server inability to list the threads.

A robust fix would be project-scoped pagination in the Desktop frontend:

1. When rendering or expanding a project, call thread/list with that project's cwd filter instead of relying only on the first global recent page.
2. Keep cursor pagination per project, or continue fetching until either at least one matching project thread is found or nextCursor is exhausted.
3. Avoid workarounds that mutate updated_at / ordering; that only forces old threads into the first global page and changes user history semantics.
4. Increasing the global page size would only delay the bug. A workspace with enough newer unrelated threads can still hide older project threads.

I checked the public openai/codex repository at current main and could not find the Desktop webview source that contains this recent-conversation store, so I cannot submit a useful external code PR for the actual frontend fix. The public repo appears to expose the app-server protocol/backend surfaces, while the affected Desktop UI source is not present there.