Bot Failed to Respond? Check Your Weekly Cap First
When turns fail with no clear message, check weekly usage and your on-demand setting first, then the status of busy routines, before assuming an outage.
Answer first: If Grok Bot stops answering or turns fail with no clear message, check three things in this order. Is your weekly usage used up? Is on-demand spending enabled with room left? Is a busy routine eating your allowance in the background? If all three look fine, treat it as a possible service problem and retry later.
Test status: troubleshooting checklist only. Nothing was reproduced. The facts come from the official Routines help page (weekly usage, the on-demand monthly limit, Run history showing Failed with a reason). The billing help page I tried (
/help/grok-bot/plans-and-billing) returned 404, so the exact cap rules aren't covered here.
Who it's for
Anyone who has seen a turn fail or a routine go quiet without explanation.
Steps
- Weekly usage: check your plan's weekly usage in the app. If it's used up, turns may stop until the reset or until on-demand spending kicks in.
- On-demand limit: if you've set an on-demand monthly limit, check whether it's enabled and not already used up.
- Background drains: open Routines. Frequent schedules or broad Slack triggers can use up the week, so pause the unneeded ones (see Cut Your Grok Bot Usage).
- Routine failures: on the phone, open the routine's Run history. A Failed run shows its reason.
- Otherwise: wait and retry. If it keeps happening, contact support with the time, the Bot's name and any error text.
Copy-paste prompt
Once it responds again:
My last few turns/routine runs failed. List my routines with schedules and triggers, flag any that run hourly or more often or on busy Slack channels,
and tell me what you can see about recent failures. Don't change anything yet.
Expected result
A short diagnosis: usage-related (pause or widen routines, or wait for the reset) or not (retry later or contact support).
Gotchas
- The Bot can't fix a used-up cap from inside a chat that's failing. Use the app's settings.
- A routine that "didn't run" might simply be paused or waiting for its next scheduled time. See the routine's details.
- I couldn't find documentation on the exact error wording for a used-up cap, so don't rely on a specific message.
FAQ
Will contacting support help? Yes, if the checks above do not explain it. Include the time, the Bot, and any exact error text.
Can a routine keep failing silently? On the phone, Run history shows Running, Succeeded or Failed with a reason, so check there.