AI assist is locked up

đź’¬ App Building
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  1. My goal: Making edits with AI assist isnt possible

  2. Issue: Assist is locked even when I log in/log out - “summarising thread” with circle circling is all I see

  3. Steps I've taken to troubleshoot: Logged out and in, powered down, replaced the JSON

  4. Additional info: (Cloud or Self-hosted, Screenshots)

    Screenshot 2026-08-07 at 11.29.07
    Screenshot 2026-08-07 at 11.29.07838Ă—412 8.47 KB

2

Summary

On a Retool Cloud instance, AI Assist is locked up when attempting to make edits — it stays stuck on 'summarising thread' with a perpetual spinner and does not recover after logging out and back in.

AI Response

A stuck 'summarising thread' spinner in AI Assist is most commonly caused by the conversation exceeding Assist's context window, which triggers automatic background thread summarization on Cloud that can stall when the thread carries a large amount of context. Both Retool and Anthropic are currently reporting all systems operational, so this points to a context/thread-size issue rather than a service outage. The recommended path is to start a new Assist thread and keep prompts smaller — breaking requests into focused steps and reducing the amount of context (e.g., large queries) passed in per prompt. Retool has also shipped improvements that reduce how often context window limits are hit, so retrying edits in a fresh thread should behave better.

Sources

:bookmark: AI Assist: The limit for Assist’s context window has been reached
A solved thread where Retool staff confirm that hitting Assist's context window triggers automatic thread summarization on Cloud and recommend starting a new thread and reducing per-prompt context to get unstuck.
:bookmark: AI-assisted app generation with Assist | Retool Docs
The official Assist guide covering how Assist edits apps, its features, and FAQs, useful for understanding prompting behavior and limitations.

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3

ok a new window worked

4

Hey @Alex_Balfour, glad a new window got you unstuck! :partying_face:

That "summarizing thread" spinner is Assist compacting your conversation in the background, which happens automatically once a thread builds up enough context. When a thread is carrying a lot (large queries or JSON pasted into prompts, for example), that step can stall and hang the spinner. Starting a fresh thread or window clears the heavy context, which is exactly why yours worked.

A few tips to avoid it next time:

  • Keep prompts focused and break bigger asks into smaller steps.
  • Point Assist at large queries or JSON rather than pasting them into the prompt.
  • If a thread ever feels stuck, a new thread is the fastest way to recover!

Check out our docs here: AI-assisted app generation with Assist :+1: