Codex Desktop: add project-level topics / grouped threads in the sidebar

Potential duplicates detected. Please review them and close your issue if it is a duplicate.

• #30451

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Adding a related request from a Codex Desktop Windows workflow.

In addition to project-level topics/grouped threads, it would be very useful to have user-created folders in the left sidebar that are not necessarily tied to a filesystem folder or project root.

Desired behavior:

• Create custom folders/sections in the left sidebar.
• Move both chats/threads and projects/workspaces into those user folders.
• Allow drag-and-drop organization between folders.
• Support sorting inside each folder, at least by name and last updated date.
• Support pinning within a folder, so pinned items stay at the top of that folder rather than only in a global pinned area.
• Preserve the folder membership, sort mode, collapsed/expanded state, and per-folder pinned order across app restarts.

This would help when Codex is used across many projects and long-running workstreams. The current project/workspace grouping is useful, but users also need a personal organization layer for their own working structure, for example clients, product areas, active/paused work, reviews, experiments, or administrative folders.

This is not a cosmetic request. It is a basic information-architecture requirement, and it is becoming a serious usability blocker.

A flat list of projects and chats does not scale. Once someone has more than a handful of ongoing workstreams, the sidebar turns into an unmanageable pile of similarly weighted items. The current workarounds — pinning, renaming, archiving, and searching — do not provide an actual structure:

• Projects cannot be nested.
• Chats/threads cannot be placed into collapsible subfolders or topics.
• Existing chats cannot be moved into the right project/topic after the work evolves.
• The sidebar cannot be sorted by name, creation date, last update, or a user-defined order.
• User-created sections cannot contain a deliberate mix of projects and chats.

This is particularly damaging for beginners and for anyone using Codex as a long-term workspace. They are expected to remember where everything is in a flat, activity-driven list instead of being given a clear hierarchy. That makes the product feel unfinished and needlessly chaotic.

Please treat this as a high-priority usability issue. At minimum, Codex needs:

1. User-created folders/topics with arbitrary nesting and collapse/expand.
2. Drag-and-drop moving of projects and chats/threads.
3. Stable per-folder sorting, including alphabetical and last-updated order.
4. A clear way to move or attach an existing chat to another project/topic without losing its history or context.
5. Persistence of the hierarchy, sort mode, and collapsed state across restarts.

The fact that #32124 had to be closed as a duplicate of this issue makes the demand clearer, not less urgent: users are independently asking for the same missing capability. A productivity app with this ambition should not force people into an ever-growing flat sidebar.

Important clarification: the requested hierarchy must not stop at “topics inside one project.”

Codex also needs a separate user-defined organization tree above projects. Projects themselves should be items that can live anywhere in that tree, alongside folders or organizational nodes. This hierarchy must not be limited to filesystem containment or local repository structure.

For example:

Company
├─ Management
│  ├─ Strategy
│  └─ Hiring
├─ Sales
│  ├─ Leads
│  └─ Customer A
│     ├─ Project Alpha
│     │  ├─ Website
│     │  └─ Automation
│     └─ Project Beta
├─ Procurement
└─ Accounting
   ├─ Monthly closing
   └─ Tax

Each level should be independently expandable/collapsible, and the depth should be effectively unlimited. A user may want only five to ten top-level nodes, then navigate downward through departments, work areas, projects, subprojects, and finally chats/threads.

The required model is therefore:

Organization folders / sections
└─ subfolders / departments / areas
   └─ projects
      └─ subprojects or topics
         └─ chats / threads

This is a personal information architecture for the Codex workspace, not merely a reflection of disk folders. It should support arbitrary nesting, drag-and-drop relocation, stable ordering, collapse/expand at every level, and persistence across restarts. Without this top-level organizational layer, even “nested projects” still leave users with a flat and chaotic project list.

Please explicitly include this broader hierarchy in the scope of this issue rather than treating it as only project-level thread grouping.