Clarify new-thread context and support moving threads between General and Projects

What variant of Codex are you using?

App / Codex Desktop

What feature would you like to see?

Codex Desktop needs a clearer and more reversible flow for choosing where a new thread starts: General, home/projectless, or a specific Project/repo.

My actual workflow often starts before I know the right project. Sometimes I want to start a quick general thread, with my home directory or another neutral default being fine. Sometimes I know the exact repo. Sometimes a general planning or debugging thread later becomes project-specific. The current UX makes that context decision feel too early, too easy to get wrong, and too hard to change later.

Concrete friction:

• If I previously worked in a project, it is easy to accidentally start the next thread in that same project when I intended a general/home thread.
• General or projectless threads feel second-class even though they are often the right starting point for research, planning, triage, or deciding which repo owns the work.
• Once a thread starts in the wrong place, there is no obvious supported way to move it into a project, move it out of a project, or re-home it to another repo.
• The sidebar and global recents view make it hard to hop across projects because the active project/context is not always visible enough before opening or starting a thread.
• The default projectless workspace behavior is confusing. A user should be able to choose where projectless/generated workspaces live, or start from a neutral home/general workspace without feeling like they created a fake project.

The mental model I want:

1. Start a thread quickly, with a clear visible context: General, Home, or Project: <name/path>.
2. Show that context prominently in the composer before I send the first prompt.
3. Let me change that context before the first turn.
4. Let me move or attach the thread later: General -> Project, Project -> General, Project A -> Project B.
5. Preserve the project memory/context benefits when I intentionally open a thread inside a repo, while avoiding the need to know the final repo before I start thinking.

Claude Code's terminal agent flow handles part of this better because choosing a repo feels like an explicit launch context. Codex Desktop has more surface area, but the project/thread navigation does not yet make that context decision feel visible, safe, or reversible.

Possible UX options

• A first-class General or Home start target in the new-thread composer.
• A persistent context chip in the composer, for example General, ~/, or powerline.
• Move to Project, Remove from Project, and Change Workspace actions on a thread.
• Project metadata in global recents, not only inside grouped project views.
• A setting for the default projectless workspace root.

Related issues

This seems related to several existing requests and bugs, but the underlying workflow issue is broader than any one of them:

• #12397: Add General Chat mode and convert chat to project
• #22345: Allow Chats to be moved into, out of, and between Projects
• #22875: Allow configuring default directory for projectless thread workspaces
• #19909: Make the Chats project directory configurable
• #24083: Show project and execution-context metadata in the global recent chat list
• #18640 / #21581 / #19873: Sidebar/project/thread visibility and grouping issues