What Kairos does by itself

The capacity guard

How Kairos asks working sessions to stop at a safe point before their account runs out, and to continue after the reset; hard caps; and how it asks a session an API error stopped to carry on.

A session that reaches a usage limit stops wherever it is, part way through an edit or a test run, and waits there until someone notices. The capacity guard warns it first, so it can stop at a safe point, and tells it when it can go on.

Before a limit

Each check works out every account's runway: when it reaches a limit, and when it has room again. Once a minute, Kairos looks at the sessions that are working:

• A session whose account runs out within 10 minutes (the lead, 2 to 60) is asked to stop at a safe point, in a way it can continue from.
• With under a minute left it is too late to ask: Kairos notes it as stopped, to be asked to continue all the same.
• Each run-out asks a session once. If you carry on with it anyway, it is not asked again until the next run-out.

The session's row in Sessions shows that it was asked to pause.

After the reset

Once the account's window has reset, and a short grace has passed:

• an idle session that paused, or stopped on the limit, is asked to continue;
• one that is still working (finishing its step, or reading its helpers' reports) is told there is no need to stop;
• one you already continued gets nothing;
• one that was closed is noted as ended. Its conversation is still there: claude --resume.

Hard caps

A hard cap is a run-out you chose, asked the same way, with differences that keep a session from running past it: a session is always asked, however little notice is left, and asked to continue once the account has room again. The messages name the cap, not a usage limit.

Codex cannot receive a message, so its sessions are never asked; the cap keeps rotation off the account instead.

Carry on after API errors

A session can also stop because a request failed for a passing reason: the response cut off, the service overloaded, throttled, or out of reach. Kairos asks such a session to carry on, and again a while later if it stops the same way, at most a few times over about three hours.

It does not ask when the stop needs you: a lost sign-in, a prompt too long, or a refusal. Those wait for you, in "Needs you" on Today.

Messages reach the session

Kairos's messages arrive as if typed in the session's window. A session in a stricter permission mode may hold them until you let them in; Deliver without approval in Settings › Sessions lets them through.

Settings

All three are in claude-rotation config. Notifications for the pause guard are under Settings › Alerts › Sessions and tasks. See Configuration and Settings › Alerts.