Why an assistant shows "No answer", and the automatic re-asks

Why it happens

Live systems have bad moments: an AI provider can be briefly overloaded or rate-limited while your check runs. Usually that costs one or two questions out of the twelve we ask that assistant, not the whole assistant. Either way the affected questions say "no answer" honestly, and your check tells you exactly how many an assistant answered, and we automatically re-ask just the missing questions 15 minutes, 3 hours and 9 hours later, at no extra cost and with nothing for you to do - your first result is usable within about an hour, and we email you when the check is complete. If an assistant is still unreachable after that, a "Re-ask missing" button on your check page starts the whole cycle again, free, and only for the questions still without an answer. What we never do is invent an answer to fill a gap: if an assistant genuinely returns nothing, your check shows that, because it is exactly what a buyer asking that assistant would experience.

What you will see

Under an assistant with missing answers, a note says how many it answered (for example "answered 11 of 12 questions") and, where the provider gave one, the reason in the provider's own words. The cell in the matrix shows ?.

The automatic re-asks

Nothing for you to do: only the missing questions are re-asked, 15 minutes, 3 hours and 9 hours after the check completes. Each pass that fills a gap updates the check and its score. You get an email either way:

• "Your check is now complete" when every question has an answer, or
• "We couldn't finish every question" if an assistant is still unavailable after the third pass.

Re-asking yourself

Once the automatic passes are used up, a Re-ask [number] missing button appears at the top of the check. It is free, re-asks only the missing questions straight away, and starts the whole cycle again. It is hidden while an automatic re-ask is still scheduled.

If an assistant keeps failing, reply to the email or send us a request.