Completed local Codex responses disappear after restarting ChatGPT desktop app
Problem
Completed responses from a local Codex agent disappear from conversations after restarting the ChatGPT desktop app.
A full response is initially visible and complete. After fully quitting and reopening the app, the conversation is truncated to the agent’s introductory message and first command/tool invocation. The subsequent tool activity and completed final response are gone.
This has now happened repeatedly, primarily in conversations associated with one local Helpdesk project. The conversations remain visible, but their contents are incomplete.
Confirmed reproduction on August 26, 2026
While preparing this issue, I deliberately tested whether the problem would recur.
- My local Codex agent completed a task and displayed a full final response.
- I copied that complete response into another ChatGPT conversation, proving it was present and visible.
- I closed and reopened the affected conversation/app.
- The completed response disappeared.
- Only the agent’s first partial message remained.
This reproduced the issue with newly generated content. It is not limited to an older conversation, a hidden sidebar entry, or an archived chat.
At least two separate completed local Codex responses have now disappeared this way.
Steps to reproduce
- Open a local Codex conversation.
- Submit a task and wait for the agent to finish.
- Confirm that the complete final response is visible.
- Fully quit the ChatGPT desktop app.
- Reopen the app and return to the conversation.
- Observe that the conversation is truncated to an earlier point and the completed response is missing.
Expected behavior
All completed messages, tool activity, and final responses should remain available after closing and reopening the app.
Actual behavior
The conversation reopens with later content missing. It ends after the agent’s initial response and first command, even though a complete final report had previously been displayed.
Environment
- macOS
- ChatGPT desktop app version:
26.819.11345 - Local Codex workspace
- Workspace dependency diagnostic: healthy
- Archived Chats: empty
- Refresh did not restore the content
- Fully restarting the app did not restore the content
- The “Chronological” sidebar filter described in the troubleshooting documentation is not present in this app interface
Feedback report
Feedback ID:
no-active-thread-01a03f4f-9c44-79d2-b559-db522f35723b
The feedback was submitted with “Include current ChatGPT session logs” enabled. Opening feedback from inside the affected conversation displayed the same feedback mechanism.
Additional information
This is not merely a missing sidebar entry. The affected conversation can still be opened, but previously displayed content within it has disappeared.
The completed work itself was independently copied or saved elsewhere, confirming that the missing final response genuinely existed before the app was reopened.
<img width="975" height="714" alt="Image" src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/b0a43c37-5555-403d-a65e-03f383edb7ae" />
<img width="514" height="288" alt="Image" src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/394abfdc-a436-46be-94d4-74a926b9844f" />
4 Comments
Potential duplicates detected. Please review them and close your issue if it is a duplicate.
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I reviewed the suggested duplicates.
#40522 and #39885 appear especially close to the behavior I am seeing, while #40907 describes a similar stale-checkpoint/history-rehydration failure. #40112 was closed as a duplicate of #38792, which documents a possible underlying thread-history projection problem.
However, those reports involve Windows, Linux CLI, Remote SSH, or a process crash. My reproduction involves the macOS ChatGPT desktop app and a local Codex workspace.
The failure occurred repeatedly across two consecutive days, August 25–26, 2026, and currently appears isolated to one local Helpdesk/UVDesk project. Other local projects in the same desktop app retain their conversations and completed responses normally.
In the affected project, a completed response is initially visible in full. After reopening the conversation or restarting the app, later tool activity and the completed response disappear, leaving only the initial assistant message and first command. This happened again while I was preparing this report.
I am leaving this issue open because it provides a macOS/local-workspace reproduction and project-specific behavior not documented in the suggested reports. Maintainers may consolidate it if diagnostics confirm the same underlying defect.
Additional diagnostic evidence confirms this is a desktop history-rendering/rehydration failure rather than deletion of the underlying conversation context.
In the same affected conversation, I asked the Codex agent—without allowing commands or filesystem access—to recall details from the completed response that disappeared from the desktop transcript.
The agent correctly returned specific information that was present only in the missing response, including:
The returned path, size, and SHA-256 exactly matched the previously copied completed response.
Therefore, the missing response remained available in the agent’s underlying conversation context even though the desktop UI displayed only the initial assistant message and first command. This strongly suggests that reopening the conversation loads a stale or truncated visible-history projection while the newer canonical conversation state remains available to the agent.
same here, the issue https://github.com/openai/codex/issues/40522#issue-5241462747 was proposed by me.