[macOS Desktop] Successful ephemeral title generation emits unknown-conversation errors after restart

Codex desktop: renderer layout errors and ephemeral-task event routing

Environment

macOS 27.2; desktop bundle identifier com.openai.codex; desktop version 26.911.61220 (9647); bundled backend 0.155.0-alpha.2.6.

Reproduction and observations

1. Fully quit and reopen the desktop application.
2. Resume an existing task and send a message.
3. Observe the app log during automatic task-title generation and streamed activity.

After a verified fresh launch at 2026-09-17 19:11:37 UTC:

• The renderer reported ResizeObserver loop completed with undelivered notifications. repeatedly.
• The renderer reported Received turn/started for unknown conversation and Received turn/completed for unknown conversation for the same temporary generation task.
• The title-generation service reported feature=thread_title and status=success at the corresponding completion. These messages therefore do not by themselves demonstrate loss of a saved conversation.
• An earlier task-description generation attempt timed out with Timed out waiting for structured result. This particular timeout has not yet recurred after the restart and should be tracked separately.

Local source inspection

The desktop-notifications prefix is attached by a global JavaScript error listener. It is not sufficient to attribute the ResizeObserver error to notification configuration.

The conversation update code logs an error and returns when it cannot find local conversation state. The fresh reproduction suggests temporary metadata-generation events are reaching the ordinary conversation handler. This is a candidate cause for upstream investigation, not a tested patch.

The structured-generation helper has an explicit timeout handler that interrupts its helper turn. The earlier timeout alone does not identify a configuration problem.

Expected behavior

Temporary metadata-generation events should be handled without unknown-conversation errors. Renderer layout observers should settle without recurrent loop errors. Description generation should complete or recover from a timeout appropriately.

Recovery already attempted

Full application quit/reopen; issues above reproduced afterward. Application deep strict code-signature verification passed during the preceding audit. No signed-bundle patches, database deletion, log suppression, or feature disabling was performed.

Privacy

This report deliberately excludes account details, conversation IDs, local user paths, task content, raw logs, and credentials.

Related reports

• #42495 already covers the misleading ResizeObserver logging prefix. The layout observation here confirms recurrence on a newer build; a shared underlying layout cause is not established.
• #40573 covers metadata generation and unknown-conversation errors with concurrent SSH tasks. This reproduction is local, after restart, with successful title generation.
• #42286 covers subagent conversation-state registration. The fresh routing reproduction here concerns an ephemeral title-generation task.

The main distinct finding in this report is unknown-conversation errors accompanying successful automatic title generation. The description timeout and layout errors are separately identified observations, not a claim of one proven shared cause.

Start by tracing the ordinary conversation update handler and how ephemeral title-generation events reach it after restart. Then inspect the structured-generation timeout handler and renderer ResizeObserver path; done means temporary events avoid unknown-conversation errors, observers settle without recurrent loop errors, and description generation completes or recovers appropriately.