Codex Desktop: completed subagents remain shown as running/processing in the summary panel

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

Codex Desktop 26.803.61601

What subscription do you have?

ChatGPT Plus

What platform is your computer?

macOS, Apple Silicon (arm64)

What issue are you seeing?

The subagent status shown in the Codex Desktop summary/task panel can become stale.

When a task uses multiple subagents, some subagents finish normally and their results are already available, but the summary panel in the upper-right/right-side area may continue to show those same subagents under the active section with a status such as 处理中 / processing for many hours.

In the observed case, a subagent named Audit content had already completed and appeared in the 完成 / completed section, but the same Audit content entry was still present in the active section and continued to show 处理中 with an elapsed time of more than 12 hours.

This creates contradictory UI state:

• the subagent result is already complete and accessible;
• the completed list correctly contains the subagent;
• the active summary still says the same subagent is running/processing;
• the elapsed runtime keeps increasing even though the subagent has already finished.

This appears to be a Desktop UI/state synchronization or lifecycle reconciliation problem rather than the subagent actually still executing.

What steps can reproduce the bug?

The issue is intermittent, but the observed pattern is:

1. Open Codex Desktop on macOS.
2. Start a task that causes Codex to spawn multiple subagents.
3. Allow one or more subagents to finish normally.
4. Confirm that the completed subagent result can be opened and that the task appears under the completed section.
5. Open or inspect the summary/task panel in the upper-right/right-side area.
6. Observe that one or more already-finished subagents can still remain in the active section with status 处理中 / processing.
7. Leave the app open for some time.
8. Observe that the stale elapsed time continues increasing even though the subagent has already completed.

A particularly clear inconsistent state is when the same subagent name is simultaneously visible in both:

• the active/processing list, and
• the completed list.

What is the expected behavior?

Subagent lifecycle state in the summary panel should reconcile immediately when a subagent reaches a terminal state.

Expected invariants:

• A completed subagent must be removed from the active/processing section.
• The elapsed runtime for a completed subagent must stop increasing.
• The same subagent should not simultaneously appear as both active and completed.
• Reopening the task, switching tasks, or rehydrating the Desktop UI should preserve the terminal state instead of restoring a stale running state.
• If the backend lifecycle state and UI cache disagree, the terminal backend state should be authoritative.

Additional information

This is related to subagent lifecycle problems such as #19197, but the observed failure mode here is different.

#19197 focuses on subagents that may actually remain orphaned/stuck and continue to count against subagent limits. In this report, the subagent output is already complete and visible, while the Desktop summary UI continues to display a stale processing state.

The behavior suggests a missing or failed reconciliation between the subagent terminal event and the summary/task-list state, possibly during task hydration, cached UI state updates, or lifecycle event propagation.

Screenshots from the affected session show:

• Audit content listed as 处理中 for more than 12 hours in the active section;
• the same Audit content also listed under 完成 / completed;
• other subagents in the same task still shown as processing for long periods.

This makes the summary panel unreliable for determining whether subagent work is actually still running.

Start by reproducing the stale state in Codex Desktop on macOS with a task that spawns multiple subagents, then trace how terminal lifecycle events update the summary/task panel and how task hydration restores state. Done means completed subagents are removed from the active list, their elapsed time stops, and they cannot appear as both active and completed after reopening or switching tasks.