Conversation Corruption Error Breaking Projects After Update to ChatGPT 5 (Mac App)

ChatGPT
1

Since the update to ChatGPT 5, I’ve been encountering a serious issue:

{
    "detail": {
        "message": "The conversation is corrupt. Please start a new conversation.",
        "code": "conversation_tree_corrupt"
    }
}

This happened twice — once yesterday and once today — I can’t delete or move that conversation out of the project, and somehow I can’t view other conversations after the broken one.

The projects keep showing “Unable to load, retry? The conversation is corrupt. Please start a new conversation.”

Both times, I believe the issue occurred while using IntelliJ’s “Work with app” feature. This is extremely disruptive, especially for long-running coding projects.

Has anyone else experienced this since the ChatGPT 5 update? Any known fixes or workarounds?

2

Hi, I have the same issue on my iPad. I think it’s a temporary bug, but it seems to only happen in Projects.

3

I wrote in support, and I advise you to do the same

4

i have the same problem. happened 3 times in a row today in study mode

5

they replied to me! I think it will be fixed soon.

“Hello,

Thank you for reaching out to OpenAI Support.

We understand how disruptive it can be to encounter the “conversation_tree_corrupt” error while working within the Projects feature, especially when it causes conversations to disappear entirely. It’s completely valid to expect stability during long-running sessions, and we’re here to assist.

We’re really sorry for the disruption. We’re currently experiencing higher-than-usual demand related to the GPT-5 launch, which is impacting availability and performance for some users. Our engineering team is actively working to increase capacity and restore normal service.

You may notice slower responses, intermittent errors, or temporary unavailability of certain models during this time. We’ll post updates on our status page as we work on the fix.

Thank you for your patience while we work to resolve this.

Best,

Marvin Kyser

OpenAI Support”

6

It’s really frustrating that half way a conversation it becomes corrupt and you lose all the work, context and responses.

What’s happening?

7

The same thing happened to me, and I reported the problem to the agent, who told me it had been reported. So we have to wait. I hope it doesn’t take too long…

8

I’ve also experienced this bug, and have reported it. I have a sort-of-workaround below that will at least allow the loading of the rest of the non-corrupt conversations in a project.

I’ve noticed this:
If I load that project in the web app, it will display on the conversations up to (approximately) the corrupt conversation. It never finishes loading, so conversations older than that corrupt one are not visible.

Today I checked for updates on the mac app, and lo and behold, there was an update. After installing the update, I can load that project in the app, and at least all the conversations are visible and viewable, except the corrupt one, which won’t load. There’s also a message at the bottom “Unable to load, retry?”.

WORKAROUND:
You must use the most up-to-date desktop app for this workaround. This won’t work on the web. I haven’t tested this on Windows, only the Mac client, but it may still work on Windows.

  1. Create a new project that mirrors the project with the corrupt conversation: Prompt and Files
  2. Move all conversations one-by-one, except the corrupt one(s), to this new project. The corrupt conversation(s) will be displayed in the list, but will fail to move.
  3. Rename the corrupt project something else - it will only have the corrupt conversation(s) left in it.
9

I have an additional workaround that SOMETIMES works to open a conversation in the app that can’t be open because is not shown because project’s conversations are not loading.

For this I used:

  • Chrome Version 139.0.7258.127 (Official Build) (arm64)
  • ChatGPT MacOs Version 1.2025.218 (1755045646)
  • Running in a Macbook Air 15.6 (24G84) Apple M3
  1. You can go to the web app at chatgpt .com
  2. Load your conversation there and then in the Chrome search/url bar next to your conversation url that should look like this: chatgpt .com /c/689d7a22-0gd4-8323-b6d0-86fb7c521462
  3. There’s going to be a chatgpt icon. I you hover over it it should say: “Open in app”
  4. Click it and it should load your conversation

Note:

I’ve tried multiple things. Closing the MacOS app before, and without doing that. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t but is particularly useful to not have to migrate your project, and since I need to link my app to vs code, this is very useful.