How-to guides
What to do when a model is busy or unavailable
Providers cap how much traffic they will take, so a model can be unavailable for a few minutes. GPTree now names the model, separates a temporary limit from a credit problem, and tells you which one you are looking at.
Every AI provider caps how much traffic it will accept, and those caps sometimes bite in the middle of a conversation. The model is not broken and neither is your account. This page explains what the message is telling you and what is worth doing about it.
The message names the model
When a turn fails because a model was unavailable, the message says which model it was. That matters most when you picked the model yourself, because "a model is unavailable" is not actionable if you do not know which one. The name shown is the model that actually ran, which is not always the default on the provider you selected.
Two different problems that look alike
GPTree separates them deliberately, because they need different things from you.
A temporary limit. The provider is throttling traffic for a window, often only a few minutes. Nothing is wrong with the account. Waiting, or sending on a different model, both work.
Credit has run out. The provider account behind that model has no balance left. This one does not clear by itself if it is your own key. You can update your balance in your provider console.
The status code a provider returns cannot reliably tell these apart, which is why GPTree reads the provider's wording rather than the number, and why the two messages are worded differently on purpose.
What GPTree does next
If the model was picked by Auto, GPTree routes around the unavailable one on your next send. You do not have to do anything.
If you pinned a specific model, GPTree does not quietly answer as a different one. Silently substituting a model you deliberately chose would be worse than telling you, because the answer you got back would not be from the model you asked for. The message offers you the switch to Auto instead, and taking it hands the choice to GPTree for subsequent turns.
When it is not a capacity problem
A refusal is a different thing. If a model declines to answer on safety grounds, retrying the same request does not help and neither does switching providers in most cases. Rephrasing the request, or breaking a broad ask into narrower ones, usually does.
Running out of GPTree credits is also different, and the message says so rather than naming a model: the model was fine, the balance was not.