[Windows 26.901.6511.0] Reopened task shows older history although recent final answers remain persisted

Environment

Codex desktop on Windows, package version 26.901.6511.0 (verified in local application log paths). Long-running local task. Exact subscription tier and bundled backend version were not measured in this investigation.

User-visible problem

The user repeatedly reports that the application becomes stuck and, after restarting, the task appears to return to older conversation content. This creates uncertainty about completed work and prompts manual recovery from copied responses.

Evidence from the affected machine

A bounded, read-only inspection of public event metadata on 2026-09-08 found:

• Three recent assistant final answers remain in the local session JSONL: 18:28:50.025 UTC, 18:43:21.171 UTC, and 20:02:01.121 UTC, with lengths 4595, 409, and 3511 characters.
• Each has a subsequent task_complete; the latest is 20:02:02.213 UTC.
• Application stop_process: 21:53:09.757 UTC; Launching app: 21:53:13.085 UTC.
• Session JSONL size at inspection: 347,061,221 bytes. The inspected trailing 16 MB parsed without errors; total-file integrity was not checked.

Earlier on the same day, logs recorded these sanitized fields:

2026-09-08T04:00:31.491Z Request failed
code=-32001 message="App server request expired while queued"
method=thread/turns/list source=tail_history durationMs=60005
pendingCountAfter=25

2026-09-08T04:07:49.277Z Request failed
code=-32001 message="App server request expired while queued"
method=thread/turns/list source=tail_history durationMs=60011
pendingCountAfter=29

2026-09-08T04:08:51.696Z Request failed
message="App server request expired while queued"
method=turn/start durationMs=30012

2026-09-08T04:11:05.391Z Request failed
message="App server request expired while queued"
method=turn/start durationMs=30005

Evidence limits

After the latest restart, thread/resume succeeded at 21:53:50.411 UTC, and thread/turns/list succeeded at 21:53:50.493, 21:53:54.026, and 21:53:54.098 UTC. Therefore, the earlier queue failures do not establish the cause of the latest restart or prove the newest history payload was wrong.

Recent persisted answers were not lost in the inspected file. A history loading, pagination, projection, or rendering issue is a hypothesis, not a demonstrated root cause. No deterministic minimal reproduction or renderer capture is available.

Separately, an agent-maintained local recovery note had an outdated heading with newer updates at its end. Its heading was corrected. That can explain stale task resumption by the agent, but is not evidence that it caused the application hang or visible history behavior.

Observed sequence

1. Continue an existing long-running task.
2. The application becomes stuck, according to the user.
3. Restart the application.
4. Reopen the task; the user sees older content and has to paste a saved recent response.
5. Local inspection still finds the recent final answers and completion events.

This is an intermittent incident sequence, not a deterministic reproduction.

Expected behavior

Reopening a task should restore the latest persisted turns and distinguish history-loading failure from missing data. Older-history loading should not prevent interactive recovery. Please investigate the cursor/pagination/projection and renderer path alongside queue behavior.

Potentially related: #43525, #36914, #21211. Please consolidate if this is the same issue; this report adds evidence of persisted final answers versus user-visible history regression.

No full logs, session contents, local usernames/paths, task IDs, credentials, project code, or customer data are attached.

Start with the reported thread/resume and thread/turns/list sequence, then inspect queue behavior alongside history pagination, projection, and rendering. Use the persisted final answers and task_complete events as evidence when comparing stored data with what is displayed. Done means distinguishing missing data from a loading or rendering regression and preserving interactive recovery, though the issue provides no deterministic reproduction or named files/tests.