Codex IDE panel turns blank/black after clicking a generated image; affected chat becomes unusable

What version of the IDE extension are you using?

26.908.40401 (openai.chatgpt, darwin-arm64), as registered in the local VS Code extensions index. The loaded version at the moment of the failure was not independently captured.

What subscription do you have?

Not provided.

Which IDE are you using?

Visual Studio Code 1.136.2.

What platform is your computer?

macOS 26.6.2, arm64.

What issue are you seeing?

Clicking an image generated by Codex makes the conversation area turn blank/black. The user reports that the affected chat can no longer be used afterward.

The supplied screenshot shows the Codex tab and conversation header still visible, while the body below is an empty dark panel with no visible messages or composer. The screenshot was inspected during preparation of this report; it is not attached to this issue.

This interrupts ongoing work and prevents the user from continuing the affected conversation.

What steps can reproduce the bug?

User-reported sequence:

1. Work in a conversation in the Codex IDE extension.
2. Ask Codex to generate an image and wait for the image result.
3. Click the generated image to view it.
4. Observe that the conversation panel goes blank/black and the chat becomes unusable.

The report is based on the user's experience and screenshot. The failure was not independently reproduced during report preparation. Frequency, whether every image triggers it, and behavior after reloading VS Code have not yet been established.

What is the expected behavior?

Opening a generated image should display the image without losing the conversation UI. Closing the image should return to an interactive chat with its messages and composer intact. An image-preview error should not blank the entire conversation.

Additional information

• Related symptom: #39911 reports a blank extension panel after expanding detail controls, on Windows. This report concerns clicking a generated image on macOS; a shared root cause is not established.
• No stack trace or crash log is available in this report.
• No chat transcript, project content, credentials, or local personal paths are included.
• Submitted with Codex assistance at the affected user's explicit request.

Start by reproducing the image-click sequence in Visual Studio Code 1.136.2 with extension version 26.908.40401 on macOS arm64, then inspect the Codex panel behavior when the generated image is opened. Done means the image displays without blanking the conversation, and closing it leaves the messages and composer usable.