Windows desktop: personal project entries remain in sidebar after switching to work account

Environment

• Codex desktop app on Windows
• Observed September 14, 2026
• Desktop app version: not captured
• Separate personal and work accounts used in the same Windows user profile

Problem

While signed into the work account, the sidebar's Projects section still shows projects associated by the user with their personal account. Work projects are visible under Pinned. The user wants the two accounts' project lists kept separate.

The user already signed out of both accounts, fully quit the app, and signed back into the work account. The unwanted personal project entries persisted.

Workflow that exposes the issue

1. Use personal and work accounts in the desktop app on the same Windows profile.
2. Sign into the work account.
3. Inspect the sidebar's Projects section: personal project entries remain visible.
4. Sign out of both accounts, fully quit, reopen, and sign into the work account again.
5. Observe that the personal project entries are still present.

These steps describe the user's observed workflow; a clean-profile reproduction has not been performed.

Expected behavior

The sidebar should consistently reflect the active account and reconcile entries when accounts change. If local projects intentionally persist across accounts, that behavior should be clearly communicated and a supported way to isolate work and personal project lists should be available.

Read-only diagnostic observations

The app's list_projects tool returned one local work project and one ChatGPT project. The list_threads tool's sidebar metadata showed the local work project in Pinned, plus two other local project IDs under Projects that were absent from the current list_projects result.

This mismatch suggests stale sidebar references or an account-context reconciliation issue, but the root cause is unconfirmed. The pinned work project's absence from the unpinned Projects section may be ordinary placement behavior; the main issue is personal project entries persisting after switching accounts.

No evidence of cloud-account merging or unauthorized cloud data access has been established. No sidebar or project mutations were performed during diagnosis.

Related reports

Possibly related: #43107, which reports sidebar state problems following account changes on Windows. This report concerns persistent personal project entries while using a work account.

Project names, account identifiers, local paths, logs, and conversation transcripts are omitted.

Start by reproducing the Windows account-switching workflow and compare the sidebar metadata with the list_projects results described in the report. Trace how sidebar Projects entries are reconciled after sign-out, restart, and sign-in; done means personal entries no longer appear in the work account, or supported cross-account persistence is clearly isolated and documented.