Windows Desktop replaces healthy local Codex sidebar with ChatGPT shell when /wham/tasks/list returns 503

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

26.715.4045.0

What subscription do you have?

Education

What platform is your computer?

Windows 11 x64

What issue are you seeing?

During an active local Codex task, the merged Desktop sidebar progressively showed fewer tasks, briefly appeared to show unrelated online ChatGPT conversations, and then switched to a generic ChatGPT shell. The active local task title remained visible, but its content stayed blank/loading. The sidebar displayed Aufgaben konnten nicht geladen werden (Tasks could not be loaded). This happened twice in the same app version.

The local app-server was healthy at the same time. At 2026-07-19T14:15:08.804Z, thread/list completed with errorCode=null in 7 ms. Starting less than one second later, the merged shell repeatedly requested:

/wham/tasks/list?limit=20&task_filter=current

and received:

HTTP 503 Service Unavailable
code=biscuit_baker_service_me_circuit_open

Those task-list failures continued through at least 14:20:55Z. Account-check, account-settings, and usage requests returned the same 503 during the interval.

This was not local task loss:

• state_5.sqlite still contained 241 thread rows.
• 241 session JSONL files remained under %USERPROFILE%\.codex\sessions.
• The current task rollout remained present and continued running.
• No state repair or database write was performed.

The first app restart restored the task UI, but the bottom-left account area showed only Einstellungen with a gear icon instead of the institution label. A second restart restored the institution label and normal operation.

The failure then reproduced again after approval activity. The restarted process had already accumulated 26 /wham/tasks/list HTTP 503 responses, so the approval did not create the outage. The useful correlation is that approval completion triggers or accompanies account refresh:

14:42:19Z-14:42:23Z  four command approvals accepted
14:42:23.254Z        account/read completed
14:42:27.592Z        /wham/tasks/list -> 503
14:42:28.647Z        /wham/tasks/list -> 503
14:42:30.880Z        /wham/tasks/list -> 503
14:42:34.938Z        /wham/tasks/list -> 503
14:43:24.361Z        file-change approval accepted
14:43:24.416Z        account/read completed

Immediately after the final approval, the sidebar again showed cloud ChatGPT items and then Tasks could not be loaded. This suggests account/sidebar refresh exposes an already failed remote task source and replaces cached/local Codex state.

What steps can reproduce the bug?

The service-side circuit-open condition was observed rather than intentionally induced:

1. Keep an active local Codex task open in Desktop.
2. Let /wham/tasks/list return HTTP 503 while local app-server thread/list remains successful.
3. While the app still renders cached/local task state, accept a command or file-change approval that is followed by account/sidebar refresh.
4. Observe the sidebar progressively lose tasks, briefly show cloud ChatGPT conversations, and switch from the Codex project/task view to the generic ChatGPT shell.
5. Observe Tasks could not be loaded and a blank/loading active task.
6. Restart the app and observe that recovery may be staged, with the task UI returning before account/institution identity.

What is the expected behavior?

A remote ChatGPT task-list or account-metadata outage should not replace or hide healthy local Codex tasks.

When /wham/tasks/list fails but local thread/list succeeds, Desktop should retain the local Codex sidebar and active task across account refreshes and approval completion. Remote-only features may show a non-blocking error, but the app should not switch to an unrelated ChatGPT history surface or require repeated restarts to restore account identity.

Additional information

Closest related reports:

• #30409 requests graceful degradation when boot-time ChatGPT metadata calls fail, but reports a full-screen Oops error on macOS rather than this Windows generic-shell fallback.
• #33029 covers custom-provider sessions blocked by unreachable ChatGPT metadata endpoints.
• #30806 covers missing history with /wham/tasks/list 401 responses.
• #17540 covers older local sidebar threads missing after restart while remaining on disk.
• #34089 reports a blank Windows root route in the same app version while /wham/tasks/list returned 200.

A screenshot and a redacted desktop-log excerpt are available. The screenshot shows the generic ChatGPT shell, the active Codex task title, and Aufgaben konnten nicht geladen werden simultaneously.