/agent can show unrelated main sessions as generic "Agent" sub-agents
What version of Codex CLI is running?
0.132.0
What subscription do you have?
ProLite
Which model were you using?
_No response_
What platform is your computer?
Linux 6.12.65-gentoo x86_64 AMD Ryzen 9 5950X 16-Core Processor
What terminal emulator and version are you using (if applicable)?
tmux on alacritty
Codex doctor report
What issue are you seeing?
In a Codex CLI session, opening /agent sometimes shows entries named simply Agent that are not sub-agents of the current session.
These entries appear to be other top-level/main sessions rather than sub-agents spawned by the current session. They have no meaningful sub-agent nickname/role and are displayed as generic Agent entries in the current session's agent picker.
I am not yet sure whether sub-agents from other sessions can also leak into the current session's /agent view, but I have observed what looks like unrelated main sessions appearing there.
This looks like a session isolation / agent-list routing issue: /agent should only show the current session's main thread and its spawned sub-agent tree, not unrelated loaded threads from other sessions.
Potentially related but not exact duplicates:
- #16799 Cross-project, cross-session state leak
- #23700 Stale Codex subagents
- #23930 Codex app subagent cards can remain stuck/visible after close while close/readback reports no live agent
- #23713 Desktop UX for persistent attached agents: attach a top-level session as a subagent to an orchestrator thread
Those issues seem adjacent, but I did not find one specifically tracking unrelated main sessions appearing inside a different session's /agent picker.
What steps can reproduce the bug?
I do not have a deterministic minimal reproduction yet, but the observed pattern is:
- Start or resume multiple Codex CLI sessions.
- In one session, use sub-agents normally, or have other sessions open/loaded in the same Codex environment.
- Open
/agentin one active main session. - Observe entries named simply
Agentthat do not correspond to sub-agents spawned by that session. - Those entries appear to be other top-level/main sessions rather than children of the current session.
If useful, I can upload feedback/logs from an affected session.
What is the expected behavior?
/agent should only show agents that belong to the current session:
- the current main session/thread, if shown by design
- direct or descendant sub-agents spawned by that session
- no unrelated top-level/main sessions
- no agents from unrelated sessions unless explicitly attached by a supported cross-thread orchestration feature
Generic Agent entries from unrelated sessions should not appear in the current session's /agent picker.
Additional information
This is concerning because it looks like cross-session UI/control-plane contamination. Even if transcript contents are not exposed, showing unrelated sessions as sub-agents can cause the user or model to interact with the wrong thread/session.
The symptom is intermittent, so the issue may depend on loaded thread state, app-server event routing, session resume/backfill, or stale in-memory agent navigation state.