[bug] Unarchived chats disappear from By project and Recent projects after their project is removed in macOS desktop app

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

26.611.61753

What subscription do you have?

ChatGPT Plus

What platform is your computer?

macOS 26.5.1 (25F80) on Apple Silicon Mac

What issue are you seeing?

The sidebar separation between Projects and Chats is a great feature because it keeps project-associated chats distinct from unclassified chats. However, there is an issue when restoring archived chats whose original project has been removed.

The unarchived chat does not appear in either By project or Recent projects.
The chat is only visible when Organize sidebar is set to Chronological list, where all project chats are all mixed together.

<img width="916" height="460" alt="Image" src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/502b3ba7-0391-437f-987e-4766d329a1aa" />

What steps can reproduce the bug?

1. Create or use a project containing one or more chats.
2. Archive all chats in that project.
3. Remove the project.
4. Later, open Archived chats and unarchive one of the archived chats.
5. Set Organize sidebar to either:

• By project, or
• Recent projects.

What is the expected behavior?

When unarchiving a chat that originally belonged to a project which has since been removed, the app should restore the corresponding project entry in the sidebar so that the chat remains visible in all sidebar organization modes.

If the original project directory no longer exists on disk, that’s acceptable. In that case, actions such as Reveal in Finder can simply be disabled or report that the project no longer exists. The important part is preserving the project’s organizational metadata so that the chat continues to appear under By project and Recent projects.

Additional information

Why this matters

Currently, unarchiving such a chat effectively makes it inaccessible from the project-based sidebar views. Users have to switch to Chronological list to find it, which defeats the purpose of organizing chats by project and makes navigation more difficult.

The expected behavior is that all unarchived chats should be visible regardless of the selected sidebar organization mode, with their original project association preserved even if the underlying project folder has been removed.