Codex Desktop crashes conversation renderer when Git directive contains Windows cwd path #23010

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1. siztankc

   added

   appIssues related to the Codex desktop appIssues related to the Codex desktop app

   on May 16, 2026
2. github-actions

   added

   bugSomething isn't workingSomething isn't working

   windows-osIssues related to Codex on Windows systemsIssues related to Codex on Windows systems

   skillsIssues related to skillsIssues related to skills

   on May 16, 2026
3. github-actions commented on May 16, 2026

   

   github-actionsbot

   on May 16, 2026 – with GitHub Actions

   Contributor

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

   • Codex desktop fails to render reopened thread containing assistant-emitted git directive blocks #23004
   • Codex Desktop on Windows crashes when rendering git UI directives with backslash cwd paths #22977
   • Codex Desktop session fails to open when git directives contain Windows paths #22968
   • Codex Desktop history thread fails to open when old messages contain directive attributes with Windows backslash paths #22985
   • LocalConversationPage crashes when opening some existing chats #22963

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4. ermaxinc commented on May 16, 2026

   

   ermaxinc

   on May 16, 2026

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   same

   
5. ermaxinc commented on May 16, 2026

   

   ermaxinc

   on May 16, 2026

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   Temporary workaround for Windows users until Codex ships a fix.

   The issue seems to be caused by Codex Desktop re-parsing old local JSONL session messages that contain directive-like blocks with Windows paths, for example cwd="D:\project\repo". The thread data is still there, but the Desktop renderer crashes while rendering the history.

   This PowerShell one-liner does a narrow local repair:

   • scans %USERPROFILE%\.codex\sessions and %USERPROFILE%\.codex\archived_sessions
   • only touches JSONL session files
   • creates .bak-pathfix-<timestamp> backups before editing
   • only normalizes Windows path separators inside directive attributes named cwd, cwds, or file
   • converts D:\foo\bar to D:/foo/bar
   • does not delete, truncate, or rewrite the conversation content otherwise

   Run from PowerShell:

   taskkill /F /IM Codex.exe 2>$null; $ts=Get-Date -Format 'yyyyMMdd-HHmmss'; $roots=@("$env:USERPROFILE\.codex\sessions","$env:USERPROFILE\.codex\archived_sessions")|?{Test-Path $_}; $rx='(?<a>\b(?:cwd|cwds|file)=\\?"?)(?<v>(?:[A-Za-z]:|\\\\)[^"\\]*(?:\\+[^"\\]*)*)(?<q>\\?")'; Get-ChildItem $roots -Recurse -File -Filter '*.jsonl' -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue | % {$p=$_.FullName; $s=[IO.File]::ReadAllText($p); $n=([regex]::Matches($s,$rx)).Count; if($n -gt 0){Copy-Item $p "$p.bak-pathfix-$ts"; $s=[regex]::Replace($s,$rx,{param($m) $m.Groups['a'].Value + ($m.Groups['v'].Value -replace '\\+','/') + $m.Groups['q'].Value}); [IO.File]::WriteAllText($p,$s,[Text.UTF8Encoding]::new($false)); "fixed=$n file=$p"}}
6. etraut-openai commented on May 16, 2026

   

   etraut-openai

   on May 16, 2026

   Contributor

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   We've issued a hotfix to address this. Please update to the latest version.
7. etraut-openai

   closed this as completedon May 16, 2026