Finished Codex Desktop task stays as New chat and is absent on mobile

Additional finding / likely trigger:

The issue seems to be triggered when the user pastes a large prompt into Codex Desktop. Codex automatically converts the pasted content into an attached document, for example Pasted text.txt. If the user then does not type any additional text into the message box, the thread title is automatically set to New content / remains in this untitled-content state.

After that, the conversation can still exist on Codex Desktop, but it is not visible from Codex mobile under the same connected Mac host and project. So the bug appears to involve the interaction between large-paste-to-document handling, empty message text, automatic thread title generation, and mobile thread-list visibility.

This looks like two states that should not be coupled: title generation and mobile list eligibility.

For this bug class, I would log a small cross-surface receipt for every finished desktop task:

• thread_id
• host id
• project id / cwd
• source surface: desktop
• prompt shape: normal text vs attachment-only paste
• title state: generated / fallback / failed
• task terminal event id
• desktop sidebar visible: yes/no
• mobile list indexed: yes/no
• final state: listed_with_generated_title, listed_with_fallback_title, desktop_only_title_pending, mobile_index_missing

That would make it clear whether the missing mobile entry is caused by the title pipeline, attachment-only prompt handling, or a separate mobile index/registry problem.

Adjacent reference from Faryo: in its tmux-backed phone/browser workbench, I keep this boundary explicit — a remote/mobile surface is only valid when it can be traced back to the intended host session, not just when a thread exists somewhere.
https://github.com/Snailflyer/faryo/releases/download/v1.0.7/faryo-public-redacted-same-session-handoff-walkthrough-20260528-0120.gif

Update / severity escalation: @etraut-openai

This has become worse than the original report. The affected conversations did not only fail to generate titles or disappear from Codex mobile. After some time, all of my conversations that failed to generate a normal title were no longer visible in my accessible conversation history. I can no longer find or reopen those threads from the UI.

Observed pattern:

• Conversation starts from a large paste that Codex Desktop converts into an attached document / attachment-only prompt.
• No additional text is typed into the message box.
• The task finishes, but the thread title stays in a failed/fallback state such as New chat / New content instead of getting a normal generated title.
• Initially, the thread is still visible on Desktop but missing from Codex mobile under the same host/project.
• After waiting for a while, those failed-title conversations are no longer visible in the history list.
• I currently have no UI path to locate or resume the affected threads.

Impact:

This is a severe history-indexing / recoverability issue from the user's perspective. Even if the underlying local/backend data still exists somewhere, the finished work becomes effectively unreachable because the UI no longer exposes the threads.

Please investigate whether failed title generation, attachment-only prompt handling, Desktop/mobile thread indexing, archived-state handling, cleanup, or history compaction is causing these threads to be dropped from the visible registry. At minimum, Codex should always retain a stable fallback row such as New chat, Untitled chat, timestamp-based title, or thread ID, and title-generation failure should never make a finished thread disappear from the visible history.

Original report feedback ID: 019e7a9c-8d8b-7ff3-bca4-404a3f23940f.