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[Desktop] Pinning a project task hides it from the project list and mimics data loss #35867
Description
What version of the Codex App are you using?
Codex Desktop for macOS 26.721.41059 (build 5848).
What platform is your computer?
macOS 26.5.2, Apple Silicon (arm64).
What issue are you seeing?
When a task that already belongs to a saved project is pinned, Codex removes it from that project's visible task list and shows it only in the separate Pinned section.
The task is not deleted or detached: thread inventory still reports the same projectId and project working directory. However, the project itself appears to have lost the task and its discussion. There is no project-level explanation that the task is merely being displayed under Pinned.
This produced a genuine data-loss scare. The user reasonably believed their project discussion had been erased or removed from the project. Only a backend thread check confirmed that the task and its history still existed and retained the correct project assignment.
What steps can reproduce the bug?
- Open a saved project in Codex Desktop.
- Confirm that one of its tasks appears in the project's task list.
- Pin that task.
- Return to the project view.
- Observe that the task no longer appears under the project; it appears only in the separate Pinned section.
- Unpin the task.
- Observe that it reappears under the project.
What is the expected behavior?
Pinning should add prominence without making the task look removed from its owning project.
Any of these behaviors would avoid the ambiguity:
- Keep the task visible inside its project and add a pin indicator.
- Show a project-level placeholder/link such as
1 project task is shown in Pinned. - Display pinned tasks in both the Pinned section and their owning project.
The project relationship and the pin/display relationship should be visually distinct.
What is the actual behavior?
The pinned task disappears from its project list, making it look deleted, moved, or detached. Unpinning makes it visible under the project again.
Additional information
- The task retained its original
projectIdand working directory throughout. - Its full conversation history remained readable.
- No deletion, archive, or project reassignment occurred.
- Searching existing open issues found several broader sidebar/history visibility reports, but no exact report for this deterministic pin/unpin behavior.
- The report was also recorded through Codex
/feedbackwithout uploading logs.
Activity
jdpworks commentedon Oct 8, 2026
I can reproduce this issue in the ChatGPT/Codex Windows desktop app.
I've also identified an important difference between Local Work and Cloud Work conversations within the same ChatGPT Project.
Local Work:
Cloud Work:
This suggests the sidebar handles pinned Local Work conversations differently from Cloud Work conversations.
Expected behaviour: Both Local and Cloud Work conversations should behave consistently. Ideally, pinning a conversation should preserve its visibility within the associated Project.
Windows app version: Version 26.1002.52244
SpartanB312 commentedon Oct 18, 2026
Another Windows desktop user encountered the same discoverability problem on October 17, 2026: they could not locate an important local project chat and believed it might be gone, until an assistant looked it up and directed them to Pinned.
What was verified through live app tools:
pinnedThreads, with an idle status.threadsarray and from the complete archived-chat listing.The rendered sidebar was not captured, so this comment does not establish a rendering failure or reproduce a pin/unpin transition. Who pinned the chat and when are unknown. The observed impact is that the user believed important work had disappeared and needed an assistant lookup to find its location.
Please preserve a visible entry or "Shown in Pinned" link inside the owning project when a chat is pinned. A location label in chat search and a "Reveal in sidebar" action would also help users recover their bearings.
Exact desktop app version was not collected. Submitted by an AI assistant at the user's explicit request to give OpenAI this feedback. Private chat titles, project names, local paths, thread IDs, conversation contents, logs, and screenshots are omitted.