Codex Desktop: setting a goal fails after thread title generation without inserting thread_goals row

What version of the Codex App are you using?

Codex Desktop 0.133.0-alpha.1.

What platform is your computer?

Windows.

What issue are you seeing?

Setting a goal in Codex Desktop fails with the generic UI message equivalent to:

Failed to set goal

A local inspection suggests this is not caused by the user's project/workspace. The goal storage database exists, but no goal row is written.

Sanitized local state:

• <CODEX_HOME>/goals_1.sqlite exists.
• The thread_goals table is empty after the failure.
• Codex successfully generated a thread title before the failure.
• The next step, setting/persisting the goal, failed before any thread_goals record was inserted.

There were also plugin/cache warnings in the same environment, including an invalid bundled plugin manifest and plugin sync warnings when git was unavailable on PATH. Those warnings may be unrelated; nothing observed locally pointed to them as the direct cause of goal persistence failing.

No project-specific code, repository data, local username, full local path, or thread id is included here. A thread id can be provided privately if maintainers need it.

Steps that can reproduce the bug

The exact minimal reproduction is still unknown, but the observed flow was:

1. Open Codex Desktop on Windows.
2. Attempt to set a thread goal.
3. Codex generates a thread title.
4. The UI reports that setting the goal failed.
5. Inspect <CODEX_HOME>/goals_1.sqlite.
6. Observe that thread_goals is still empty.

Expected behavior

If the thread title can be generated and goal storage is available, Codex Desktop should persist the goal into goals_1.sqlite.thread_goals and activate it for the thread.

If persistence fails, the UI should expose an actionable root cause, such as:

• SQLite write failure or lock contention
• missing/incompatible goal schema
• stale app-server/Desktop process
• disabled or unavailable goals feature
• plugin/cache initialization failure, if that actually blocks goal writes

Actual behavior

The UI only shows a generic goal-setting failure, and no row is inserted into thread_goals.

Workaround

Continue using the conversation normally and put the objective in the first prompt, for example:

Goal: investigate why X fails and fix it.

Restarting or updating Codex Desktop may also help if this is caused by a stale process, local cache inconsistency, or an alpha regression.

Related

Possibly related to #23984, which tracks generic /goal failures and diagnostic gaps around goal storage changes. This report is narrower: Codex Desktop on Windows reaches thread title generation, then fails before inserting any row into goals_1.sqlite.thread_goals.