Help
Troubleshooting
The handful of things that actually go wrong.
“Add your OpenRouter API key in Settings first”
No key is saved in this browser. Keys live in local storage, so a different browser, a different device, or cleared browsing data all mean pasting it in again. How to get one →
401 or “invalid API key”
The key was mistyped, revoked, or copied with whitespace. Create a fresh one at OpenRouter and paste it again.
“Insufficient credits”
Your OpenRouter balance ran out. Top up at openrouter.ai/credits. Nothing is lost — the novel and every chapter are saved on our side.
Rate limited
Free models are limited hard; paid models occasionally throttle at the provider. Wait a moment or switch models — you are not charged for a failed request.
Generation feels slow
The first chapter after a break is slower and dearer: the cache has expired and the whole history is being read fresh. Later chapters in the same sitting are faster. Reasoning models are also slower to the first word by design — the context panel shows you what they are doing.
Accepting takes several seconds
Expected. It is writing the chapter summary with a real model call. The progress bar streams the summary as it is written, so you can see it working.
I closed the tab mid-chapter
Generations survive navigating around the app and report when they finish. A full page reload does end them — reopen the chapter and prompt again.