---
title: "Rate-limit guard"
description: "A limit is waited out on its own — with a reset time, the run resumes by itself."
---

> Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://colmugx.github.io/cetas/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Rate-limit guard

## It is automatic

When the current model comes from a subscription, the provider's limit signal
carries a reset time. Cetas notes that time and resumes work on its own when it
arrives — no alarm to set, no "try later" to remember, no progress bar to
babysit.

The boundary, stated just as plainly: the Cetas process is still running and
the session has not changed. Walking away, sleeping, working on something else
while it waits — all fine. Quit the process or switch sessions, and there is
nothing to resume.

## 3 a.m., and nobody is watching

Without the guard, long tasks die in a stupid place. Ninety minutes in, the
provider answers 429, the agent says "quota exhausted, try later", and the
message sits unread until breakfast. Five hours gone, and the task needs a full
re-brief. The guard makes "try later" its own job.

A limit without a reset time — most metered API keys — is probed on a capped
backoff. You sleep.

## The wait does not lose your work

Waiting is only useful if everything is still there on waking. The failed turn
is written to disk before the session is marked recoverable; the other order
returns a truncated context at the worst moment. While it waits you do
something else, and when it resumes the task continues and the history keeps
growing. You never re-describe anything.

## Do you need it

Three questions:

- Have you run tasks longer than an hour?
- Does your provider meter quota in five-hour windows, with tasks that
  routinely cross one?
- Have you ever set an alarm to come re-send a task?

One yes and it is worth configuring. None, and you can leave it; installed, it
stays out of the way.

## Two things it does not do

It never moves your run to another provider or model on its own; that is
`/model quick-pick`'s job, and the two do not reach into each other. And after
enough failed attempts it stops and hands you the conclusion rather than
knocking on the same door all night.

Source: https://colmugx.github.io/cetas/en/features/rate-limits/index.mdx