Codex Desktop should scope sessions by project/workspace and prefix task titles

Resolved 💬 2 comments Opened Aug 14, 2026 by Zenine Closed Aug 14, 2026
💡 Likely answer: A maintainer (github-actions[bot], contributor) responded on this thread — see the highlighted reply below.

Problem

Codex Desktop currently makes it hard to work across many local repositories because sessions/tasks are shown in a global task list instead of being scoped to the current project/workspace folder.

In daily use, I often work across many repositories with similar task names such as "sync", "review", "fix tests", "update docs", or "continue". Because the list is global, it becomes difficult to tell which session belongs to which repository.

I also tried adding a rule in AGENTS.md asking the agent to name tasks with the folder/repository name. That helps only when the agent explicitly renames a thread, but it does not affect Codex Desktop's default title generation. New sessions still get generic generated titles that are not reliably project-scoped.

This is noticeably weaker than the project/workspace-scoped experience I get in other coding assistants such as Claude Code, Grok, and Kimi.

Requested behavior

  1. Codex Desktop should support a project/workspace filter for the session/task list.
  2. When a local folder or repository is active, Codex should show only sessions for that folder by default, with an explicit option to view all sessions globally.
  3. Generated task titles should include the project/repository/folder name by default, or at least expose a setting like:
  • title_prefix = "folder"
  • title_prefix = "repository"
  • title_prefix = "project"
  1. The project/workspace association should be visible in the task list, even when viewing all sessions.
  2. Plugins/extensions should be able to query/filter sessions by current workspace folder, instead of receiving the same global thread list as Codex Desktop.

Why this matters

When using Codex for serious multi-repo engineering work, a global session list becomes noisy very quickly. Project-scoped history is essential for repeated day-to-day workflows, especially when many sessions have similar titles.

A practical example:

  • Repository A: sync
  • Repository B: sync
  • Repository C: review and push
  • Repository D: continue

Without a project/workspace filter or visible project prefix, the task list becomes ambiguous and error-prone.

Expected UX

A good default would be:

  • In a project/repository view: show sessions for the current project only.
  • Provide a toggle/filter: Current project / All projects.
  • Prefix or annotate titles, for example:
  • nudge-public | update reminders
  • writing-craft | article draft review
  • niate-web | image asset review
  • Let plugins/extensions access the same workspace-scoped query capability.

Notes

This request is specifically for Codex Desktop session/task organization and project scoping. It is related to session management and sidebar usability, but it is not only about manual renaming. The main issue is that Codex should treat project/workspace context as first-class when listing, naming, and exposing sessions.

View original on GitHub ↗

2 Comments

github-actions[bot] contributor · 14 days ago

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

  • #37558
  • #37763

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Zenine · 14 days ago

Thanks for the duplicate check. I reviewed the suggested issues:

  • #37558 / #36299 cover the broader Codex Desktop sidebar project grouping/navigation behavior.
  • #37763 / #36548 cover pinned tasks losing or hiding workspace/project association.

For the narrower scope I care about now, the better tracking issue is #25319, which is specifically about scoping Codex VS Code chats to the current workspace/project. I added an implementation note there that the app-server already exposes ThreadListParams.cwd, so the VS Code extension may only need to pass the active workspace folder path(s) into thread/list.

Closing this broader Desktop issue to avoid duplicating the existing sidebar/project-association reports. The VS Code extension-specific part can continue in #25319.