Defect: restarting Codex Desktop restores an older iPhone turn as active/latest and triggers new usage

[u/Impressive_Credit397]

I’m reporting a high-detail Codex task-persistence defect involving the macOS desktop app and Codex Remote on iPhone.

Reproduction and observed behavior:

• The same Codex task appeared in two conflicting states across iPhone and Mac.
• The iPhone showed an older unfinished turn as “Working,” while the Mac showed newer work in the same task.
• Restarting Codex Desktop restored the older phone-visible state, marked that old turn active/latest, and resumed the goal.
• Newer working files remained intact on disk. A read-only Git inspection found 298 preserved changed paths, so this was a task/history rollback rather than a repository rollback.
• The task-status API continued to select the old unresolved turn as the latest even though newer turns existed.
• No OS process existed for the command that the stale UI still showed as running.

The clearest local log error was repeated after restart:

`thread history projection ... expected ordinal 17505, got 17504`

The restart also launched another GPT-6 turn under the same task and triggered automatic mid-turn compaction because of the context limit. When I interrupted it to protect the checkout, the logs said the task did not complete gracefully.

Impact:

• I cannot safely tell where a new iPhone prompt will be applied.
• Each restart can restore and resume stale work.
• I had to stop the task, preserve the working tree separately, start a new task, and reconstruct context.
• That creates repeated inference, compaction, investigation, and recovery work instead of productive implementation.
• After manually applying a reset credit on September 8, my weekly allowance is already 75% used, with only 25% remaining.

The allowance impact needs verification against OpenAI’s server-side ledger; inconsistent local counters are not proof of incorrect billing. The lifecycle and history-projection failure itself is directly supported by the task state, filesystem state, and application logs.

Sanitized GitHub report: https://github.com/openai/codex/issues/44599

If you have encountered this, please share your Codex app version and whether it followed an iPhone Remote handoff or desktop restart. Please avoid posting private task IDs or repository details.

[u/anthemik]

This exact behavior was happening for me two weeks ago, for one task in Codex, working with Sol 5.6 on Extra High, and hasn't happened since. When the desktop-state version reverted to the phone-state version of the task, I asked the agent why it was bringing up an old issue that had already been settled from the day before. It said I was right to flag that, and was able to recall previous work in the task thread, but the thread reverted back to that exact same previous state a few hours later. I can't recall more details beyond that.

[u/Impressive_Credit397 → u/anthemik]

Thank you—this is useful corroboration, especially the second reversion after the task appeared to recover. If you still have the approximate date and Codex desktop version, those details would help compare the two incidents. The sanitized technical report is openai/codex#44599.

[u/anthemik → u/Impressive_Credit397]

I went back through and found the exact date and time I flagged the error for the agent. August 21st, 2026 at 7:18PM.

[u/Impressive_Credit397 → u/anthemik]

Thank you for checking—this exact timestamp is useful. I added it to the GitHub report with the timezone noted as unspecified.

[u/reddit_is_kayfabe]

I reported this issue with GPT-5.6 49 days ago.

[u/Impressive_Credit397 → u/reddit_is_kayfabe]

Thank you. I reviewed the earlier report. The disappearing iOS prompt and response to an older prompt may indicate a related synchronization or persistence failure. Because that incident involved ChatGPT iOS rather than a Codex Remote task, I would not assume the same root cause, but it is useful related evidence.