Codex Desktop: group forked threads into collapsible thread families

What problem are you trying to solve?

In Codex Desktop, when a user clicks the Fork icon on an assistant response and chooses a Local Fork, Codex creates a new thread that preserves the context before the fork point. This is very useful for exploring multiple directions from the same conversation.

However, the sidebar currently shows these forked threads as independent flat chat entries. Because the forked threads share the same early context, they often receive the same or nearly identical title. After several forks, the Chats sidebar becomes hard to scan and related work is scattered across the list.

This is especially painful for users who run many projects, where each project may have many forked sub-conversations.

Current behavior

• Forking a thread creates a new conversation with preserved prior context.
• The new conversation appears as another top-level item in the sidebar.
• Forked conversations may have the same auto-generated title as the parent or sibling forks.
• There is no visible parent/child grouping in the sidebar.
• Users must manually rename, search, pin, or archive threads to keep the sidebar manageable.

Requested behavior

Please add fork-aware thread management in Codex Desktop:

1. Group forked threads under their original parent thread as a collapsible thread family.
2. Show the fork relationship visually, for example:

• Parent thread
• Fork A
• Fork B
• Fork C

1. Allow users to rename individual forks while preserving the parent grouping.
2. Support pin/archive/search at both the individual thread level and the thread-family level.
3. Optionally allow manual folders or tags for project-level organization beyond the existing project/workdir grouping.
4. Auto-suggest a better fork name based on the first user prompt after the fork, so sibling forks are easier to distinguish.

Why this fits Codex specifically

This is not just a generic folder request. Forking is a core Codex workflow for branching from a shared context. Since forked threads are logically related and the underlying thread model can expose lineage such as forkedFromId, the UI could use that relationship to present a tree or grouped family rather than a flat list.

Related issues

This is related to, but more specific than:

• #26227, which asks to persist side chats as child threads attached to the main thread.
• #25498, which asks for broader project management and moving threads between projects.

This request is specifically about Local/Worktree Forks in Codex Desktop and how they are organized in the sidebar.