Codex Desktop 26.810.7004.0 shows subagent child threads as top-level sidebar conversations after update

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• #37761

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Confirmed on macOS as well with ChatGPT/Codex Desktop 26.810.52044 (6662). A bounded archive experiment provides a strong feedback signal that the top-level sidebar is indexing internal subagent threads.

Evidence

I classified local sessions only when persisted metadata satisfied:

session_meta.payload.source.subagent != null

Before remediation there were:

• 793 active internal subagent sessions;
• 14 already archived subagent sessions.

Archiving one child through the app's supported thread-archive API changed the counts to 792/15. The child disappeared from the top-level list, while its parent thread remained readable and still contained the child activity record.

Archiving the remaining 792 internal subagent sessions produced:

• 0 active internal subagent sessions;
• 807 archived subagent sessions;
• no failures;
• parent threads still readable;
• UUID titles and repeated parent-task titles gone from the normal task list.

No rollout was deleted. This demonstrates that the underlying data is valid and that visibility/classification—not corruption—is the relevant seam. Archiving is only a user-level workaround; the product should not require or automatically perform it.

Suggested fix

Make top-level visibility a derived policy at the thread-catalog/sidebar selector:

function isInternalSubagent(thread: Thread): boolean {
  const source = thread.source;
  return Boolean(
    source &&
    typeof source === "object" &&
    (source.subagent != null || source.subAgent != null)
  );
}

const topLevelThreads = threads.filter(
  thread => !isInternalSubagent(thread)
);

Important behavior:

1. Exclude only internal spawn-agent children from top-level Recent/project/search limits.
2. Do not archive or delete them; keep them accessible from the parent task's activity/subagent UI.
3. Group nested children using persisted lineage such as parent_thread_id / parentThreadId.
4. If a child is shown in a dedicated subagent view, use its nickname/path plus parent title instead of falling back to the raw UUID.
5. Normalize both persisted lowercase source.subagent and any legacy camel-case source.subAgent at the compatibility boundary.
6. Rebuild the derived sidebar index after upgrades; durable rollout/session data should remain the source of truth.

Regression tests should cover a normal user thread, user-created fork, depth-1 and depth-2 internal subagents, legacy metadata casing, missing title, and a parent that remains visible while its children are excluded from the top-level list.

Since your diagnostics already point to valid durable data plus a classification/indexing mismatch, this is a useful codex-rescue==0.1.0a4 field case. It will not change sidebar visibility or archive child threads, but a read-only doctor pass on one representative parent/child rollout can tell us whether the persisted transcript itself is structurally healthy and how the subagent/source metadata is classified.

codex-rescue doctor --json "/path/to/a-representative-rollout.jsonl"

A sanitized summary of status, findings, and aggregate counts is sufficient. Please do not post raw rollouts/SQLite, prompts, tool input/output, thread IDs, repository data, credentials, usernames, or private paths.

Environment

• Platform: macOS
• App: unified ChatGPT / Codex Desktop
• Version: 26.814.41407 (build 6720)
• Affected surface: project sidebar, not only the global Recent list

Observed behavior

After a recent Desktop update, previously archived subagent child sessions started appearing as independent top-level conversations inside a local project sidebar.

The affected entries include:

• raw UUIDs used as visible titles;
• approval-wrapper text such as The following is the Codex agent history...;
• child-task prompt fragments that are not meaningful standalone conversations.

This is particularly confusing because the actual parent tasks are still archived correctly. The child-session files are also still stored in the local archived-session area, so this does not appear to be data loss or an accidental unarchive operation.

Local diagnostic evidence

I inspected the local thread catalog and found that the incorrectly displayed rows are marked as thread_source = subagent, while their source paths point to archived session files. In the affected project, 77 archived subagent records are still treated as displayable catalog candidates; there are 80 such archived child records in the local catalog overall.

This suggests that the regression is broader than active child threads being shown in Recent: the project/sidebar indexing path is also failing to apply archive filtering when rebuilding or rendering subagent records.

Expected behavior

Archived subagent child sessions should not appear as top-level project conversations. They should either:

1. remain hidden by default;
2. be grouped beneath their parent task; or
3. be exposed only through an explicit diagnostic/history view.

At minimum, the sidebar should filter both subagent origin and archived status before applying its top-level recent/project conversation limit.

Follow-up from Windows Desktop 26.818.5229.0 (Microsoft Store/MSIX).

The opposite classification now occurs after the recent update: Guardian child threads are no longer top-level Recent entries, which avoids the duplicate/sidebar-clutter problem described here. However, existing child history becomes difficult to discover from normal history without a documented parent-level route.

Sanitized read-only diagnostics:

• state_5.sqlite contained 108 local thread rows and passed integrity checks.
• 42 ordinary CLI/VS Code user threads were present in the local desktop catalog.
• 45 Guardian child rows (thread_source=subagent; source identifies Guardian) were intentionally absent from that catalog; their rollout files still existed.
• 18 additional absent rows were archived user threads, and 3 were one-off exec-origin sessions.
• This is not evidence of transcript deletion or provider loss.

Please keep Guardian children excluded from top-level Recents, but provide a stable, documented way to inspect historical child work from its parent task (or an explicit historical-subagents view). That preserves the clutter fix without making prior agent work appear to disappear after an update.