Forked session loses all original record timestamps when editing an earlier prompt (codex-cli 0.145.0)
Open 💬 2 comments Opened Jul 23, 2026 by Yan233th
💡 Likely answer: A maintainer (github-actions[bot], contributor)
responded on this thread — see the highlighted reply below.
What version of Codex CLI is running?
codex-cli 0.145.0
What subscription do you have?
Team
Which model were you using?
gpt-5.6-sol
What platform is your computer?
Linux 6.12.94+deb13-amd64 x86_64 unknown
What terminal emulator and version are you using (if applicable)?
Not relevant
Codex doctor report
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}What issue are you seeing?
On codex-cli 0.145.0, editing an earlier prompt branches the conversation (per #33201, shipped in 0.145.0). The branched session is a full copy of the conversation, but every copied record's timestamp is rewritten to the fork creation time, destroying the original per-message timeline inside the branch.
A session whose records spanned 8 distinct days (2026-06-28 … 2026-07-22) collapses to a single day in the fork — all ~14k records carry the fork timestamp. Original timestamps survive only in the root session, reachable via forked_from_id (which points at the parent session, not a message).
Practical impact: the branch I actually continue working in is the one that loses its history; from the session in use, there is no way to tell when any earlier message was really sent.
What steps can reproduce the bug?
- In codex-cli 0.145.0, open a session with history spanning >1 day.
- Edit an earlier user prompt (the #33201 "branch on edit" path) and continue.
- A new session file is written under
~/.codex/sessions/with a new session id andforked_from_id→ parent. - Inspect the fork file: every record's
timestampequals the fork time; the original multi-day distribution is gone.
Evidence (session ids abbreviated):
- Root
019f0ebc-…, timestamps by day: 06-28 / 07-01 / 07-13 / 07-14 / 07-15 / 07-20 / 07-21 / 07-22 - Fork
019f88f3-…(forked_from_id = 019f0ebc): all 14157 records timestamped 2026-07-22 - Field-level diff of matched records: 85% of differing values are
timestamp(all restamped to the fork instant), 6% regenerated ids (turn_id/call_id); message text is byte-identical.
What is the expected behavior?
Copied historical records in a forked/branched session should either preserve their original timestamps, or be clearly marked as copied history distinct from messages freshly sent in the branch. The session a user actively works in should retain a trustworthy view of when each message was originally sent.
Additional information
- Related to #21025 (fork timestamp rewrite), but filing separately because: (a) it reproduces on codex-cli 0.145.0, where #21025's reporter (Mac App) said it stopped reproducing for them; (b) it is now triggered by the new edit-earlier-prompt behavior (#33201, 0.145.0), so exposure just increased; (c) the impact differs — the branch a user actively works in loses its history, not merely "looks confusing".
- Lineage: #31902 (0.144.0 — editing an earlier message overwrote instead of forking) → #33201 (0.145.0 — made edit-earlier-prompt always fork/preserve) → this issue (the fork loses original timestamps).
- Related feature request: #35005 (option to edit an earlier prompt in place instead of always forking).
- Behavior is client-side (session-file writing); model/provider appears incidental.
Side note: each fork is a full ~23MB self-contained copy (no dedup); one edit-chain here = 9 files / ~215MB (possibly related to #20230).
2 Comments
Potential duplicates detected. Please review them and close your issue if it is a duplicate.
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Not a duplicate of #34268. That issue is about storage growth from forks duplicating compaction snapshots / inline images (multi-agent V2, Desktop). This one is about forked sessions restamping every record's
timestampto the fork time, losing the original per-message timeline (codex-cli 0.145.0, edit-earlier-prompt). Different defect and impact — though both are fork side-effects on session rollout files.