Codex Desktop shows growing number of phantom working subagents #38577

In the AILAB-002 Codex chat, all subagents have completed and the live agent
registry reports no active child agents — only the root agent exists.

However, the Subagents panel initially displayed:

• 31 working
• 14 done

After fully quitting and reopening ChatGPT Desktop, the same chat displayed:

• 45 working

No new subagents were started between these observations.

Expected:
The panel should show 0 working subagents, or otherwise accurately reflect
the live agent registry.

Actual:
The number of “working” subagents increased from 31 to 45 after restarting
the application.

This looks like stale or duplicated subagent state being restored by the
desktop UI.

Environment:

• OS: Linux
• Date: 2026-08-14
• Chat: AILAB-002
• App version: [add version from Settings/About]