It stopped before it finished

In most cases nothing is broken and asking it to continue is the right move — it picks up from what is already done rather than starting over. What you should not do is retype the whole request, which pays for the finished part twice.

But “continue” only works if the run stopped on a ceiling. If it stopped to ask you something, it is waiting, not finished. Here is how to tell them apart.

1. It hit the per-turn cost ceiling

How it looks: the run ends mid-work with a note saying it reached its spending limit for a single turn, that you were only charged for work that actually ran, and that you can ask it to continue.

What it actually is: a fixed ceiling of $0.50 per turn that you cannot see or change. It is not the spend limit you typed above the composer — in a chat that number is not applied at all, which is why a run can end at a figure with no relationship to it. The full story is on Spending limits; it is the single most misread thing in the product.

What to do: ask it to continue. Each new turn starts the count again, so a job that needs more than one turn’s worth of work simply takes more than one turn. If it keeps happening on the same job, the job is too big for a chat — hand it off as a task, where the limit you set is genuinely read.

2. It ran out of time or steps

How it looks: the same shape of ending, but early in a job that was not expensive.

What it actually is: a turn also stops at five minutes of wall-clock time, at a twenty-step cap on tool calls and file writes, and at a size ceiling on how much text one turn may move through — whichever comes first. A step already running is allowed to finish, so one slow step can carry a turn past the five-minute mark. Separately, a stream that goes quiet for two minutes is cut rather than left hanging.

What to do: continue. If the same job keeps hitting the step cap, split it — “do part one” then “now part two” gets further than one instruction that needs thirty steps.

3. It stopped to ask you

How it looks: it is not finished and it is not ended — there is a question, or an approval waiting on a specific action it is about to take.

What it actually is: the deliberate checkpoint. Approval arrives at the moment it is about to act, not up front, so it describes the actual email rather than the idea of email. Sending or publishing always stops for you, whatever you have set.

What to do: answer it. It waits indefinitely and charges nothing while it waits. If it asks too often — or not often enough — the setting is covered in When it checks with you. If it is asking for something you did not give it, it may be an app you never added to the run: A connected app isn’t being used.

4. A handed-off task went to Needs you or paused

How it looks: the task list shows Needs you or paused rather than a finished result.

What it actually is: two different things. Needs you means its own spend limit was found exceeded between steps, or it has a question — it is waiting on you and costing nothing. Paused with a message means the connection stalled and automatic retries did not recover it; the work is intact.

What to do: for Needs you, decide whether to raise the limit or take what it has. For paused, press Resume. Both are on the task’s result page. When it takes too long covers the stalled shape in full.

Whatever it was, you were charged for what ran

Billing happens step by step, so anything that finished is already paid for and a turn that consumed nothing costs nothing. There is no refund for a run cut short — see When a run fails. The receipt is accurate about what you were charged even where a limit was not honoured.