/ultrareview: free run consumed when cloud session crashes from upstream rate limiting

Resolved 💬 3 comments Opened May 8, 2026 by dotcomjack Closed Jun 7, 2026

What happened

Ran /ultrareview on a branch (Free ultrareview 1 of 3). The cloud session was dispatched and "Remote review completed" — but with the error:

API Error: Server is temporarily limiting requests (not your usage limit) · Rate limited

No findings were produced. Despite the crash, the free-run counter decremented: the follow-up prompt confirmed "you have 2 free runs left." So a server-side rate limit (explicitly not my usage quota, per the error message itself) burned one of my three free monthly runs.

Expected

When the cloud job fails because of upstream/infra rate limiting (not user quota, not user error), the free run should not be consumed — or it should be auto-credited back. The error message itself makes the distinction clear ("not your usage limit"), so the system already has enough signal to know this is on Anthropic's side.

Repro context

  • Command: /ultrareview (no args, local branch bundle)
  • Branch scope: 235 files changed, 41895 insertions(+), 2339 deletions(-)
  • Session ID: 011CvAxiNaV9VmHuywJWYbrK
  • Track URL: https://claude.ai/code/session_011CvAxiNaV9VmHuywJWYbrK?from=cli
  • "Cooked for 2s" before failing — failure was near-immediate, suggesting upstream throttling rather than mid-review work.

Suggestion

Either:

  1. Don't decrement the free-run counter when the cloud session exits with an upstream rate-limit / server error (any non-user-caused failure), or
  2. Surface a "report run as failed → credits back" affordance in the post-crash prompt that already says "you have 2 free runs left."

Right now there's no way to recover the run, and re-running risks hitting the same backpressure window and burning another.

Environment

  • Claude Code CLI
  • macOS Darwin 25.3.0

View original on GitHub ↗

This issue has 3 comments on GitHub. Read the full discussion on GitHub ↗