Windows 26.1002: project chats repeatedly disappear with many projects; incomplete thread assignment migration and confusing same-name projects #52276

Summary

Project chats repeatedly disappear from the Windows desktop sidebar despite remaining readable and unarchived. Same-named local and ChatGPT projects also appear as confusing duplicate project entries. This has recurred several times over the past weeks; the user associates the onset with having many projects and tasks. The exact triggering update and a numerical threshold have not been established.

This report adds current-build evidence to the related issues below. A shared root cause is not yet proven.

Version and environment

• Observed: October 8, 2026, Europe/Berlin.
• Running desktop Windows package: OpenAI.Codex_26.1002.7124.0_x64 (verified from the running ChatGPT.exe path and installed package).
• Running Codex binary reports codex-cli 0.162.0-alpha.2.
• Windows 11 Pro x64, OS version 10.0.26200.
• Subscription tier was not collected for this report.
• Local state contains 166 unarchived direct user threads and 66 entries in local-projects (the latter also includes mirrored ChatGPT projects).

User-visible symptoms

1. Two existing chats, The Vibe Core and The Vibe Bodhi, no longer appeared where the user expected them in their project.
2. The user reported that the Rocksearch project's chats appeared entirely missing.
3. Two projects named Rocksearch are listed, making it unclear where the conversations belong.
4. The disappearance and apparent duplicate-project behavior have been reported repeatedly over several weeks, rather than as a single incident today.

The user perceived this as potential data loss. The recovered chats were readable through the app's direct thread-reading tool.

Read-only diagnostic findings

Conversations are still present

• Rocksearch has 18 direct user threads in state_5.sqlite; all have archived = 0 and their transcript files exist. Separate internal subagent records were excluded from this count.
• Three Rocksearch conversations were successfully read through the app's thread-reading tool.
• Both missing The Vibe chats were likewise successfully read by ID, have archived = 0, and have project_id = NULL in SQLite.
• Neither project’s missing chats appeared in the complete archive listings obtained during diagnosis.

Project assignments are inconsistent across persisted stores

• For all 18 Rocksearch user chats, .codex-global-state.json still has explicit thread-project-assignments pointing to the correct local Rocksearch project.
• Those same 18 SQLite thread rows have project_id = NULL.
• The local migration state reports:

{
  "version": 1,
  "projectsMigrated": true,
  "threadAssignmentsMigrated": false
}

• pendingThreadAssignmentIds contains 44 entries, including both The Vibe Core and The Vibe Bodhi.
• Rocksearch thread cwd values use the Windows extended-length path prefix \\?\, while the saved project root uses the ordinary Windows path form for the same existing directory. Whether that mismatch affects this build's grouping is unconfirmed.

Same-name project entries are distinct records

• The projects API reports one local Rocksearch project rooted in the existing repository and one ChatGPT Rocksearch project with a different ID.
• Persisted creation timestamps place both records on July 21, 2026, approximately twelve minutes apart. Therefore, their appearance today does not establish that the app has just created another duplicate or copied a repository.
• Clear project-type and location cues are needed to distinguish these records. This usability problem may be separate from the missing-chat bug.

The recent-list limit is not a storage limit

The agent-facing list_threads tool accepts at most 50 recent unpinned chats. Missing threads were recovered through the local index and direct reads. That tool limit alone does not prove the desktop renderer has the same cutoff; please investigate whether project listing/search incorrectly depends on a global recent subset, as reported in #21128.

Observed reproduction conditions

1. Use the Windows desktop app over time with many projects and more than 50 direct conversations.
2. Revisit older projects and inspect their chat lists.
3. In the affected installation, previously available chats disappear from the project view; a project can appear to have no chats.
4. Read the missing conversations by their existing IDs: the content remains available.

This is the sequence observed on an existing installation, not a clean-install minimal reproduction. Restarting, reinstalling, deleting state, or modifying database records was not performed as part of this diagnosis.

Expected behavior

• Opening a project should show its persisted chats with pagination, independent of the most recent global conversations.
• Existing project assignments should migrate reliably and remain consistent across stores.
• Incomplete migrations should be retried or surfaced with a safe recovery path.
• Local and ChatGPT projects with the same name should be clearly distinguishable.
• An empty list should distinguish genuinely absent chats from failed or incomplete loading.

Related reports

• Codex Desktop silently hides project conversations outside the global recent-50 window #21128 — project conversations hidden outside the global recent-50 window.
• Bug report: Local projects disappear from sidebar after Windows desktop update #42739 — Windows project visibility and incomplete assignment migration.
• Windows: sidebar shows 'No chats' in project folders because cloud sync rewrites threads.cwd with \\?\ extended-length prefix #27243 — Windows extended-length cwd path mismatch affecting grouping.

Please advise whether this current-build evidence belongs to one of those issues and provide a supported recovery procedure that preserves conversations and files.

Submitted by the user's assistant at the user's explicit request. Diagnostics were read-only; no project reassignment, archival, deletion, or local state repair was performed.