# The assistant stopped dying on long jobs

Shipped · August 18, 2026 · Assistant

Long pieces of work pause and carry on by themselves instead of being cut off mid-sentence with a connection error.

![The Assistant panel at the end of a long job that carried on by itself: the last two of three batches of minimums and pars, each on its own card, and a summary covering all 112 items, with Approve all (3) in the header.](https://handbook.company/marketing/updates/assistant-survives-long-jobs.webp)

## It stopped mid-sentence

Ask the assistant for anything large and it could stop halfway through, leave a cut-off reply on screen, and show a connection error. The only way forward was to ask again and hope. Worse, you could not tell what it had already done, so asking again risked doing half of it twice.

## What changed

- It estimates what the next piece of work will cost before starting it, using how long this turn's earlier pieces took, and stops cleanly rather than starting something that will not fit. A stop is a pause the panel continues from on its own.
- Every model call carries its own deadline, so a stalled call is ended by us rather than by the host cutting the connection.
- It says what it actually did, rather than what it intended to do.
- A bulk change that fails partway is rolled back as a unit, so you are never left with half of it applied.
- It remembers what it has already read, so a long conversation stops re-reading the same things and running out of room.

Source: https://handbook.company/updates/assistant-survives-long-jobs/

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