[Windows/WSL][26.901.6511.0] Project creation fails after environment switch; history recovery does not restore project management

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

Affected Windows package verified during diagnosis on September 7-8, 2026: 26.901.6511.0 (OpenAI.Codex_26.901.6511.0_x64). This is the observed installed package version, not a claim about the latest available release.

What subscription do you have?

Using a custom OpenAI-compatible model provider. Subscription details are not included. This failure occurs during local project management, without starting a model turn.

What platform is your computer?

Windows x64, with the Codex desktop Agent Environment switched from Windows Native to WSL. WSL distribution: Ubuntu-24.04. Existing projects include folders on Windows drives.

What issue are you seeing?

Please prioritize the Windows/WSL project-management and history-visibility failures. Switching the supported Agent Environment has required repeated backups, diagnosis, restarts, and recovery work just to keep existing projects usable. New project creation still fails.

Related reports: #41290, #41463, and #30737. I understand the request to avoid duplicates; this report adds evidence from a different affected build and distinguishes partial history recovery from the still-broken project-creation operation. If this should be consolidated, please retain this evidence in the tracking issue and identify which issue tracks the fix.

Observed behavior:

• After switching from Windows Native to WSL, saved project names remained, but many existing conversations disappeared from their project lists.
• Switching back to Windows Native restored visibility of the existing history.
• In WSL mode, creating a new project repeatedly shows the generic "Failed to create project" toast.
• Backed-up, local metadata recovery restored access to existing conversations, but did not fix new project creation. I am not proposing manual database editing as a supported workaround.

What steps can reproduce the bug?

1. Use Codex Desktop on Windows with existing saved projects and conversations.
2. Change Agent Environment from Windows Native to WSL and restart the app.
3. Check the existing project conversation lists.
4. Attempt to create a new project from a Windows-drive folder while WSL mode is active.
5. Observe the generic creation-failed toast.

For the history symptom, switching back to Windows Native restores visibility. I have not established a clean-profile reproduction or tested every folder type; other reports linked above contain their own separate control tests.

What is the expected behavior?

• Switching agent environments should preserve access to saved projects and conversations.
• Valid project folders should work in WSL mode, with Windows paths translated consistently where necessary.
• If creation fails, the UI or logs should expose the actionable backend error rather than only a generic toast.

Additional information

Sanitized diagnostic evidence from this installation:

1. During the initial investigation, all 532 indexed Windows conversation files were still present. This was a visibility/path-association problem, not evidence that the conversation files had been deleted.

2. The WSL desktop backend used Windows-hosted session files via CODEX_HOME, but a separate Linux index via CODEX_SQLITE_HOME. Some indexed working directories remained in Windows format. An observed malformed path had this shape (personal paths replaced):

   /mnt/c/Program Files/WindowsApps/<package>/app/resources/D:\Projects\Example
   

3. Startup logs on September 7 contained:

   [host-app-server-projects] Local app-server project migration failed
   Invalid request: AbsolutePathBuf deserialized without a base path
   

4. In an isolated database-copy test using the local backend, correcting the project working-directory representation restored one project's directory-filtered results from 0 to 11 conversations. Both legacy and paginated history samples remained readable.

5. On September 8 at 14:42:07 and 14:42:08 UTC, backend trace logs recorded two project/create requests. No new project appeared in the WSL project table. The available logs did not include the request parameters or error responses, so I cannot prove that those two failures returned the same AbsolutePathBuf error.

6. Inspection of the affected desktop bundle showed the project write helper constructing roots directly from rootPaths for create/import requests. That is a concrete investigation lead, not proof of the complete root cause or of the absence of conversion elsewhere.

Both Windows and WSL config.toml files parsed successfully. This installation's Windows .codex directory was restored from a previous OS installation, so restored state remains a possible contributing factor; a clean-profile comparison has not been performed. No causal configuration setting has been established.

Could a maintainer please confirm the tracking issue and affected/fixed versions, and provide either a fix or a documented, non-destructive workaround that preserves history? Please also cover Windows/WSL switching, saved project associations, and project creation in regression tests. Remaining on Windows Native avoids the original history-visibility symptom but does not meet the need to use the WSL Agent Environment reliably.

No raw logs, credentials, account tokens, private repository names, or personal filesystem paths are attached.

Start with the Windows/WSL reproduction steps and the startup migration log reporting AbsolutePathBuf deserialized without a base path. Inspect the desktop bundle's project write helper, especially how roots is built from rootPaths, and trace the project/create path. Done means saved project associations remain visible after switching environments, valid Windows-drive folders can create projects in WSL mode, and regression tests cover history visibility and creation failures.