Codex Desktop: autosave unsent prompts and clarify side-chat persistence

Summary

Codex Desktop should autosave unsent prompts and make side-chat persistence explicit.

Codex is not just a chatbot. It is becoming an agentic IDE/workspace, and users often spend real planning time writing long, detailed prompts before sending them. Those drafts should be treated more like editor state than disposable chat input.

Motivation

I recently lost a long, detailed prompt after an unexpected laptop shutdown. The prompt had been refined in a Codex side chat, but the final version was still unsent. Recovering it required local forensic work across Codex state/log files. That should not be necessary for a normal user workflow.

For agentic IDE use, prompts are project artifacts. They can contain hours of planning, implementation details, design decisions, and task sequencing. Losing an unsent prompt is closer to losing unsaved editor work than losing a casual chat message.

Requested behavior

• Autosave composer drafts for each thread.
• Persist unsent prompts across app restarts, crashes, and machine shutdowns.
• Treat side-chat drafts the same way as main-thread drafts.
• Preserve side-chat history, or clearly communicate when a side chat is temporary/discarded.
• If side chats are intentionally ephemeral, show an explicit warning before close/discard.
• Provide a simple way to recover or reopen recent side chats.

Expected UX

If I type a long prompt and the app closes unexpectedly, reopening Codex should restore the draft in the same thread or offer a recoverable draft entry.

If I use a side chat to refine a prompt, I should either be able to reopen that side chat later or know clearly that closing it will discard it.

Related area

This overlaps with side-chat persistence and session recovery. The specific request here is for durable prompt draft autosave and explicit side-chat retention/discard behavior.