[Windows][Pet] Running activity disappears after 180s; subagent events are treated as unknown conversations

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

26.707.8479.0

What subscription do you have?

ChatGPT subscription (exact tier not shown in the Codex About dialog)

What platform is your computer?

Microsoft Windows NT 10.0.19045.0 x64

What issue are you seeing?

Summary

The Codex Desktop Pet activity bubble disappears while a local task is still running.

I initially suspected cross-thread interference because another task had active subagents and the logs repeatedly contained:

Received item/started for unknown conversation conversationId=<redacted-subagent-id> rendererWindowAppearance=avatarOverlay
Conversation state not found conversationId=<redacted-subagent-id> rendererWindowAppearance=avatarOverlay

However, a separate primary thread that did not spawn subagents showed the same disappearing activity bubble and never logged unknown conversation for its own conversation ID.

Inspection of the packaged Pet notification code shows that a running session notification expires at updatedAtMs + 180000. Item/reasoning progress does not appear to renew that expiry. This makes the activity bubble disappear after about three minutes even though the turn is still running and producing progress.

There is also a second Pet state-tracking problem: spawned subagent rollout files exist and contain thread_source: "subagent" plus a valid parent thread ID, but both the primary renderer and avatarOverlay receive their events as unknown conversations.

The two symptoms occur concurrently, but current evidence indicates that subagent errors do not delete or corrupt the primary conversation state. They are separate paths in the same Pet/conversation tracking area.

What steps can reproduce the bug?

Primary-thread expiry

1. Open Codex Desktop and wake the Pet.
2. Start a local task that runs longer than three minutes.
3. Do not spawn any subagent in this thread.
4. Observe that the Pet activity bubble initially displays live task progress.
5. Continue producing reasoning/item updates for more than three minutes.
6. The activity bubble disappears while the turn is still running.
7. Application logs contain no unknown conversation entry for the primary thread.

Subagent state error

1. In a different local task, spawn a background subagent.
2. Confirm that its rollout JSONL exists and identifies it as a subagent with a valid parent.
3. Observe the desktop log from the first subagent event onward.
4. Both renderers report the child ID as unknown:

• rendererWindowAppearance=primary
• rendererWindowAppearance=avatarOverlay

1. Subsequent item start/completion events continue to report Conversation state not found.

No session IDs are included here because they may identify private task data; they can be provided privately if needed.

What is the expected behavior?

• A Pet notification whose conversation status is still running should remain visible.
• Incoming progress activity should renew the notification lifetime, or a running notification should not use a fixed expiry.
• Subagent events should either be registered/hydrated into the desktop conversation store before they are broadcast, or intentionally filtered from Pet handling.
• Events from an unrelated subagent must not affect the visibility of a healthy primary-thread notification.

Additional information

• Codex Desktop: 26.707.8479.0
• Bundled Codex CLI recorded in session metadata: 0.144.2
• Platform: Microsoft Windows NT 10.0.19045.0 x64
• Local AppX deployment and package signature are healthy.
• No Codex application crash was recorded.
• SQLite PRAGMA quick_check returned ok for state_5.sqlite, logs_2.sqlite, memories_1.sqlite, and goals_1.sqlite.
• The primary and subagent rollout JSONL files are present and readable.
• Resetting local state was intentionally not attempted because the stored data passes integrity checks.
• The issue began after recent desktop updates, but the available local evidence is insufficient to attribute it conclusively to one exact build or to a server-side feature gate.
• Existing issues were searched for Pet/avatarOverlay expiry and the exact error text; no matching report was found.