AI Agent

Troubleshooting: Errors & Rate Limits

Resolve common chat and agent errors, including rate limiting and budget exhaustion.

Most assistant errors are temporary and clear on a retry. This page explains the common ones, what they mean, and what to do.

"Too many AI requests. Try again in Ns."#

You've sent requests faster than the per-minute limit allows. The message includes how many seconds to wait.

  • What to do: wait the indicated number of seconds, then send again. The conversation stays open.
  • Why it happens: there's a per-minute cap on AI requests (your firm configures the exact rate). Rapid-fire sends — or several people on the same network at once — can trip it.
Warning

Repeatedly hitting the limit can temporarily pause AI for your account as an abuse safeguard. If you see a message about requests being paused due to repeated limit violations, wait out the cooldown it gives you and slow down.

"You've used your monthly AI assistant allowance"#

Your monthly base usage is exhausted. This is a usage-budget stop, not a bug.

  • Firm seat: ask your firm admin to enable additional usage for your seat, or to top up the firm's usage pool.
  • Solo individual: purchase additional usage from your account settings.
  • Wait it out: your base allowance resets monthly on your firm's subscription anniversary.

See AI Budget & Usage for the full picture, including how the firm-wide extra pool works.

"Session token limit reached. Please start a new conversation."#

A single conversation has grown large enough to hit its per-session cap.

  • What to do: start a new chat. A fresh conversation resets the limit and is also cheaper to run.

"The engineer assistant hit a snag"#

Something failed mid-turn — for example a transient model error or a tool/connection hiccup. The error is logged automatically.

  • What to do: try again. These are usually transient.
  • If it persists: start a new chat, or simplify the request and retry. Repeated failures are captured for your firm's administrators to review.

The assistant didn't reply, or replied "I couldn't process your request"#

Occasionally a turn completes without a usable answer.

  • What to do: rephrase and resend. Being specific about the project and the action you want ("update the beam calc in project X to a 30 psf live load") helps.

AI features look disabled#

If the assistant or its AI-powered inputs are turned off, AI may be intentionally disabled at one of these levels:

  • Globally — a platform-wide pause.
  • Your account — AI is switched off for your user.
  • Your firm or plan — your firm doesn't have AI access enabled.

If you expect AI to be available and it isn't, check with your firm admin first — the most common cause is the firm-level setting.

Errors over email#

When you reach the assistant by email, the same limits apply. If a usage limit or internal error stops the run, you'll get an email reply explaining it rather than silence — except for the security rejections (wrong sender, no firm, no AI access), which are intentionally silent.

Still stuck?#

  • Confirm your usage isn't exhausted — see AI Budget & Usage.
  • Start a fresh conversation from Chat History.
  • If a problem is reproducible, your firm administrators can review the logged error details for failed turns.