Codex app shows stale merged/closed PR for main branch

I’m seeing the same issue on the current Codex Desktop version available to me:

• Codex Desktop: 26.623.30605 (CFBundleVersion: 4415)
• Platform: Darwin 25.5.0 arm64 arm

In my case this now appears on every thread in the repo UI, not just when starting a new chat. The UI shows the old merged PR under the branch/environment popover for main, as in the attached screenshot.

<img width="231" height="295" alt="Image" src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/4a9707f1-a739-41e3-97ed-6fd3b772dc9b" />

The PR Codex is surfacing is:

• PR: demo/demo#2
• State: MERGED
• Head branch: main
• Base branch: demo
• Current title: demo merge

I verified local Git config is not the source at this point:

git config --get-all branch.main.github-pr-owner-number | wc -l
# 0

I'm new to the Codex app and am also experiencing this.. Spent way too much time trying to figure it out. Hope it gets fixed.

Confirmed this is still reproducible in the current desktop build available to me:

• Codex Desktop: 26.707.30751
• Platform: macOS 26.1, arm64

A single historical reverse/sync PR causes every normal sidebar thread whose stored branch is main to display the Merged PR badge. The concrete PR is buildbetter-app/buildbetter#4519:

• State: MERGED
• Head: main
• Base: staging
• Merged: 2026-06-30

The repository and local main checkout are clean and synchronized. GitHub search returns exactly that historical PR for head:main.

I also inspected the installed desktop bundle. The sidebar PR chip invokes the gh-pr-status query using the thread's stored cwd and headBranch; for ordinary local threads, headBranch is main. Consequently all such threads share the same lookup result and inherit the historical merged PR badge. Worktree threads on other branches are not affected in the same way.

This makes the issue broader than an incorrect Environment-panel card: it changes the status icon for every main-branch thread in the project sidebar.

Suggested safeguards:

1. Do not associate MERGED or CLOSED PRs with active sidebar threads during branch-based discovery.
2. In particular, skip historical PR discovery when the head branch is the repository's default branch, unless the user explicitly opened that PR.
3. Ideally key PR association to an open PR and/or a matching head commit rather than branch name alone.

There is no practical GitHub-side cleanup for a merged PR whose head was the long-lived default branch, so affected repositories otherwise retain the false association indefinitely.

Still reproducible on Windows in the newest Microsoft Store build available today (2026-07-16):

• Platform: $(Win32_OperatingSystem: Microsoft Windows 11 Pro.Caption), $(Win32_OperatingSystem: Microsoft Windows 11 Pro.Version), $(Win32_OperatingSystem: Microsoft Windows 11 Pro.OSArchitecture)
• Store package: OpenAI.Codex 26.707.9981.0 (Store ID 9PLM9XGG6VKS)
• Bundled app version/build: 26.707.72221 / 5307
• Bundled app server:

I ran into the same issue with Codex Desktop showing a historical merged PR as associated with new sessions on the current branch.

I traced this to the PR lookup using gh pr list with --state all. This allows merged and closed PRs to be returned, after which Codex may select one of them as the current PR.

As a temporary workaround, I placed the following narrow wrapper earlier in PATH. The repository and branch values below are placeholders:

#!/usr/bin/env bash
set -euo pipefail

REAL_GH=/usr/bin/gh
TARGET_REPO="OWNER/REPO"
TARGET_HEAD="BRANCH"

args=("$@")
is_pr_list=false
matches_repo=false
matches_author=false
matches_head=false
state_index=-1

if [[ ${args[0]-} == pr && ${args[1]-} == list ]]; then
  is_pr_list=true
fi

for ((i = 0; i < ${#args[@]}; i++)); do
  case ${args[i]} in
    --repo)
      [[ ${args[i + 1]-} == "$TARGET_REPO" ]] && matches_repo=true
      ;;
    --repo=*)
      [[ ${args[i]#--repo=} == "$TARGET_REPO" ]] && matches_repo=true
      ;;
    --author)
      [[ ${args[i + 1]-} == @me ]] && matches_author=true
      ;;
    --author=@me)
      matches_author=true
      ;;
    --head)
      [[ ${args[i + 1]-} == "$TARGET_HEAD" ]] && matches_head=true
      ;;
    --head=*)
      [[ ${args[i]#--head=} == "$TARGET_HEAD" ]] && matches_head=true
      ;;
    --state)
      [[ ${args[i + 1]-} == all ]] && state_index=$((i + 1))
      ;;
    --state=all)
      state_index=$i
      ;;
  esac
done

if [[ $is_pr_list == true &&
      $matches_repo == true &&
      $matches_author == true &&
      $matches_head == true &&
      $state_index -ge 0 ]]; then
  if [[ ${args[state_index]} == --state=all ]]; then
    args[state_index]=--state=open
  else
    args[state_index]=open
  fi
fi

exec "$REAL_GH" "${args[@]}"

This changes --state all to --state open only for the specific PR lookup used by Codex. All other gh invocations are passed through unchanged.

After restarting Codex, the stale PR association disappeared. This seems to confirm that the lookup should either query only open PRs or filter out merged/closed PRs before selecting the associated PR.

I’ll remove this local workaround once the upstream fix is available.