Renaming an SSH alias leaves stale task bindings and makes existing tasks unopenable

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Assessment

Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Newbie friendliness
48/100
Issue type
Bug
Clarity
Mostly clear
Activity status
Quiet
Tech stack
rust
Domain
desktop

Research direction

Start by tracing local state handling for thread-project-assignments and the SSH host and project IDs, then inspect where task selection would issue thread/read or thread/resume. Reproduce the alias rename flow and verify that existing tasks remain selectable and responsive after the connection is reopened under its new host ID, with reassignment available when reconciliation is ambiguous.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

app bug remote session
What version of the Codex App are you using (From “About Codex” dialog)?

26.715.61943

What subscription do you have?

Pro 20x

What platform is your computer?

Darwin 25.5.0 arm64 arm

What issue are you seeing?

After renaming an SSH host alias, selecting tasks created under the previous alias makes Codex Desktop unresponsive.

The renamed connection works normally, and the affected tasks remain healthy on the remote machine. They can be listed and read when explicitly addressed through the new host ID.

Local state inspection shows that saved remote projects use the new host ID, while existing thread-project-assignments still reference the previous host ID and obsolete project IDs.

When an affected task is selected, the renderer becomes unresponsive before a target-specific thread/read or thread/resume request is logged.

What steps can reproduce the bug?
  1. Configure an SSH host alias.
  2. Connect to it in Codex Desktop, save remote projects, and create tasks.
  3. Quit Codex Desktop.
  4. Rename the SSH alias without changing the underlying remote machine.
  5. Reopen Codex Desktop and connect using the renamed alias.
  6. Select a task created under the previous alias.
  7. Codex Desktop becomes unresponsive.
What is the expected behavior?

Codex should reconcile existing task and project bindings when an SSH alias is renamed, preserving access to the remote task history.

If automatic reconciliation is ambiguous, the app should offer a way to reassign the task to the renamed connection instead of becoming unresponsive.

Additional information

The remote Codex state and task histories are intact. This appears to be a Desktop state-reconciliation problem: the tasks can be accessed using the new host ID, but their local project assignments still point to the previous host ID and project IDs.

Dominant language
Rust
Stars
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Merged PRs (30d)
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