Codex Desktop Automations badge shows stale high count after automation run cleanup

Summary

Codex Desktop's sidebar Automations badge can show a large stale count even after the real automation registry and local active thread/session state are clean.

In this case, the sidebar continued to show hundreds of automation items (for example, 885) even though local checks showed only 21 real automation definitions, with 19 paused and 2 active lightweight sentinel jobs.

Observed behavior

• Codex Desktop sidebar shows a high Automations badge count.
• The count persists after restarting Codex Desktop.
• The count also persisted after a full Mac restart.
• Some stale automation/standby conversations were still discoverable through app-level thread search and could be archived individually, but the sidebar badge remained much higher than the searchable remaining items.

Expected behavior

The Automations badge should reflect the current actionable automation items/runs, or it should provide a way to bulk archive/clear stale completed automation run history. It should not continue to show hundreds of stale items after the backing automation/thread/session state is clean.

Local verification performed

Sanitized local verification showed:

• Real automation definitions: 21
• Paused heavy automations: 19
• Active lightweight sentinel automations: 2
• Active local automation rows in Codex thread database: 0
• Active local automation session files under the Codex sessions tree: 0
• App-level thread search for known automation titles such as Email Monitoring and Layer E Sent-Mail Fulfillment returned no automation-run threads.
• App-level thread search did find several stale Proposal Intelligence standby rollover threads; archiving those via the app thread archive API caused those searches to return empty, but did not resolve the sidebar badge count.

Example local checks used conceptually:

threads where archived = 0 and title/preview begins with Automation: => 0
active automation session files under ~/.codex/sessions => 0
~/.codex/automations/*/automation.toml => 21

Impact

This makes it difficult to tell whether automations are actually active or whether stale automation run history is accumulating. It also undermines trust during credit-burn investigations, because the UI implies hundreds of automation items even when the real registry and active local state are clean.

Request

Please consider adding one or more of the following:

• Make the Automations badge reflect only actionable/current automation items.
• Expose stale/completed automation run history separately from real automations.
• Add a supported bulk archive/clear completed automation-run history action.
• Ensure the sidebar count refreshes after app restart and after thread archive operations.

Environment

• Product: Codex Desktop for macOS
• Area: Automations sidebar/counting/archive behavior
• Date observed: 2026-06-08