`/side` chats are expiring too quickly; expiration behavior is opaque

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

Version 26.527.31326 (3390)

What subscription do you have?

Pro

What platform is your computer?

Darwin 25.5.0 arm64 arm

What issue are you seeing?

Ephemeral /side chats expire too quickly in Codex App (not tested for CLI). Currently, side chats seem to expire after a very short period, even when the app is open and the side chat is active. Chat expiration seems to even more aggressive after recent updates. In my loose estimation, it feels like side chats expire after ~15 minutes without any way to recover them.

How I use /side: I use side chats to perform research, the conclusions of which I feed back into the main chat. Some of these conversations end up becoming very long. Unfortunately, I often get deep into a side conversation only to realize that it has been expired and unrecoverable.

Furthermore, expiration behavior is not transparent. After when is a chat supposed to expire? My expectation is that side chats not expire so long as the side chat window is open.

What steps can reproduce the bug?

Use /side in Codex App. Leave the computer for a little while and resume the conversation. Get error message "Error creating task no rollout found for thread id [..]"

What is the expected behavior?

Immediate fix: Don't expire open side chats. If open side chats must remain on a timer, then please make that timer visible to users.

Stretch goals: allow users to turn side chats into a durable fork https://github.com/openai/codex/issues/20262

Additional information

_No response_