Retool Assist context window limit reached even with one-letter prompt

💬 App Building
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1

  1. My Goal
    I want to continue developing my existing Retool app called "Property Management System." I do not want to rebuild it or start a new app.

  2. Issue
    Retool Assist/Agent is completely unusable inside this specific app. The app itself works and the preview loads normally, but Assist fails on every prompt, even if I type only one letter.

Error shown:

"Context window limit reached"

Expanded message:

"prompt is too long: around 1,005,000 tokens > 1,000,000 maximum"

This happens even with extremely short prompts like "hi" or "Create one new page called NG Bot." Assist appears to be automatically including too much hidden app context before my prompt is even processed.

  1. Troubleshooting Steps Taken
  • Restored the app to a stable previous version
  • Confirmed the app preview loads normally
  • Tried using much shorter prompts
  • Tried typing only one letter
  • Avoided sending large instructions
  • Checked that there is no current visible build error
  • The problem still happens every time inside this same PMS app
  1. Additional Info
  • Hosted: Cloud or Self-hosted (please specify)
  • Screenshots: (attached or pending)
  • I do not want to lose the existing app, data, pages, or functionality
  1. What I'm Asking For - Can Retool please help with one of the following:
  • Clear/reset the Assist/Agent context for this specific app
  • Remove any stuck or failed Assist session context from this app
  • Explain how to start a truly fresh Assist session for the same app
  • Confirm whether the app has become too large for Assist to edit
  • Advise how I can continue using Assist on this same existing app without rebuilding it
3

Hey @valhala welcome to the Community, so great to have you here! :rocket:

I am really sorry to hear you're running into this, especially on an app you've clearly put a lot of work into. To address your questions: there's no way to clear, reset, or remove stuck context for a specific app. However, starting a fresh new thread in Assist is worth trying first, it resets the conversation context and may get you unblocked. If even a new thread fails immediately, then your app has simply grown too large for Assist to handle, and unfortunately continuing to use Assist on this app as-is won't be possible.

If that's the case, the good news is you don't have to start from scratch, there's a built-in migration tool that converts your existing classic app to the new Retool app builder. Open the new app builder, select "Convert classic app" in the chat panel, choose your app, and it handles the conversion automatically.

Once you're in the new builder, you can keep prompting the same way you have been. And for a complex app like yours, it's genuinely a better experience, more expressive UIs powered by React that you can edit via prompting, AI-first workflows that reduce time to production, greater flexibility with the broader dev ecosystem, and enterprise-grade governance and security baked in by default.

Let me know how it goes! And if you'd like some hands-on help, come join our live Office Hours, we can walk you through the conversion process and help with any questions along the way! :smiley: