Codex App: paused automatic goal runner creates thousands of empty turns and conversation stops rendering

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

Current Windows Codex desktop build as of 2026-09-07. Exact About-dialog version unavailable from the affected task.

What subscription do you have?

Paid ChatGPT/Codex subscription (tier redacted).

What platform is your computer?

Windows 11 x64. Local usernames, project names, paths, task IDs, and repository identifiers are redacted.

What issue are you seeing?

After I explicitly asked a long-running Codex task to pause, the automatic goal runner continued starting new turns. The agent later confirmed:

Yes—the automatic goal runner kept starting new turns after your pause request. I honored the pause; those turns made no code changes. Work is committed. The broader goal remains unfinished. I’m paused.

The Codex Windows app then stopped displaying the conversation text for that task.

Reading the task through Codex task-coordination APIs showed thousands of short completed turns with empty item lists. The older substantive turn was still present much farther back in the history. The task status also alternated between active and idle even though the agent said it was paused.

The full affected task ID can be provided privately to OpenAI engineering.

What steps can reproduce the bug?

1. Start a long-running Codex desktop task with an active automatic goal runner.
2. Ask the agent to report any turn-runner issue and pause if stuck.
3. The agent acknowledges the pause and makes no further code changes.
4. Observe that the goal runner nevertheless creates repeated new turns automatically.
5. Reopen the task in Codex for Windows.
6. The conversation body no longer renders.
7. Inspect the task through the coordination/read API: the recent history contains a very large number of empty completed turns, while the substantive turn is much farther back.

What is the expected behavior?

A user or agent pause should stop automatic continuation immediately. No further turns should be created until the user resumes the task. The conversation should remain readable in the Windows app regardless of task length or runner state.

Additional information

• The repeated turns reportedly made no code changes.
• Work completed before the failure was safely committed.
• The broader development goal remained unfinished and paused.
• This appears to involve two related failures:
  1. Pause cancellation is not honored by the automatic goal runner.
  2. The resulting runaway empty-turn history causes or exposes a Windows conversation-rendering failure.
• No prompts, source code, account identifiers, local paths, or complete task/session IDs are included in this public report.

No source files or tests are named. Start by reproducing the pause flow on Windows, then trace automatic goal-runner cancellation and conversation rendering while inspecting task history containing empty turns. Done means pausing prevents further turns and the affected conversation remains readable despite a long history.