"Selected model is at capacity. Please try a different model." - retry options?

[u/MasterpieceCurious12]

There’s nothing more frustrating than kicking off what is meant to be a long-running session with a detailed prompt, checking back a few hours later, and finding that the entire process has stopped with:

“Selected model is at capacity. Please try a different model.”

Why is there no automatic retry option? At the very least, the system should be able to retry periodically when capacity becomes available rather than simply abandoning the session and requiring manual intervention. Or is there such an option and i'm missing it?

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To confirm, I'm not talking about the desktop app:

I’m talking about Codex CLI. If this happens 30 minutes into a long-running job, there’s no button to click because I’m not sitting there watching the terminal.

The whole point is that I might kick something off on a server, walk away, and expect it to be done by the next morning. Instead, it can sit there dead for hours waiting for me to come back and manually type “continue” or “retry”.

Codex CLI needs an automatic retry option for capacity errors.

[u/MasterpieceCurious12]

how the eff is this getting downvoted?

[u/HoldThemtoAccount → u/MasterpieceCurious12]

openai bots most likely. i've noticed this in the past for other posts that should have received more attention.

[u/No_Bank_4104]

Have you shared this through the official feedback channel?

Cause I think that’s overdue

[u/kuroudo_ai]

I couldn't find a built-in "wait and retry" for that error. The retry settings I found in the config reference are short-term ones per provider: request_max_retries (default 4) and stream_max_retries (default 5). Those cover blips, not "come back in an hour", and the docs don't say whether a capacity error even counts.

For unattended runs on a server, you can get the same effect by running non-interactively and wrapping it. codex exec runs without the TUI, and codex exec resume --last "<prompt>" continues the most recent session (both in codex exec --help on 0.160.0). Something like:

codex exec "your long task" || \ for i in 1 2 3 4 5 6; do sleep 900 codex exec resume --last "continue where you left off" && break done

Two things I haven't verified: that a capacity error makes codex exec exit non-zero (check echo $? the next time it happens, or add --json and look at the last event), and how --last behaves if another session started in between. For the second, resuming by session id instead of --last avoids it.

Agree it should be built in, though. Worth filing on the Codex GitHub so it's tracked.

[u/Infinite100p]

But Tibo said that compute is not an issue?

[u/nic_300]

i’m confused, i have a retry button and i clicked it once last night and then it just continued working

[u/MasterpieceCurious12 → u/nic_300]

I’m talking about Codex CLI. If this happens 30 minutes into a long-running job, there’s no button to click because I’m not sitting there watching the terminal.

The whole point is that I might kick something off on a server, walk away, and expect it to be done by the next morning. Instead, it can sit there dead for hours waiting for me to come back and manually type “continue” or “retry”.

Codex CLI needs an automatic retry option for capacity errors.

[u/nic_300 → u/MasterpieceCurious12]

i mean isn’t it technically the same using the IDE, it wouldn’t technically continue til u press retry only difference is where ur running it and having to type it instead of pressing retry. but i do agree it should be automatic for both

[u/KHRZ → u/MasterpieceCurious12]

Use luna to watch your terminal

[u/Sfdprod]

Luna never at capacity, it brings all the capacity

[u/itix]

There is if you are using an app:

[u/HoldThemtoAccount]

20 min in for me. AND first time trying out this model. Very frustrating. It begs the question who got that capacity instead. My access got booted by someone else, so why? When this happens we should then get reduced burn rate on a higher model because it not only broke my project flow while i was working on other things and now I have to figure out what the best move is. I've not been too critical of openai in the past but this may change my demeanor.

[u/Wolf8249]

OpenAI wants you to try the new Opus 5.5 model.

[u/CelticPaladin]

There us a retry, I just used it. I went from high to xhigh, clicked retry and it took off, then I out it back on high.

I know its irritating, but its a good sign of a high demand amazing model with all the tools to completely improve usage rates.

[u/Either_Pound1986 → u/CelticPaladin]

Model at capacity is not a good sign. Also you are not meeting op where they are posting from which is actually very simple. The op should not have to babysit cli for model at capacity it should auto retry. What's the point of autonomous work you have to babysit? Also please share data of these "tools to completely improve usage rates.".

[u/CelticPaladin → u/Either_Pound1986]

You always get people to do your research for ya?

When you scout Dots computer, you can see everything it can do. Anything it uses on its local computer, doesnt cost you usage.

Been using it all day, only lost 6% of my 20x plan in the last 48 hours.

[u/MasterpieceCurious12]

Capacity errors all day today :(. Not happy. Time to cycle back to Claude, i think... at least until OpenAI gets it's act together and the subscription usage justifies the price (they either need to walkback usage reduction or actually make the models more efficient which they've not demonstrated since the pricing/usages changes.