“AI services are temporarily unavailable. Please try again in a few moments.”
This can happen every now and then, of course, I have no problem with this happening sometimes.
When this occurs in a long run, then valuable context is sometimes destroyed, and not all requirements are yet satisfied in teh database.
That means that you have to give the prompt(s) again, and tell Agent to take into account that some work may aleady have been done, and other work not, and some work may be partially complete (the trickiest part).
Fixing that costs real resources: time and money.
So, my complaint is this: after the message “AI services are temporarily unavailable. Please try again in a few moments.” we get a message “Agent use: $56.12”.
Replit charges me not only after not having delivered, but also increased my costs because the impact of the previous prompts now has to be checked, corrected, and then the work still has to be finished. So I have to payh for the failing infrastructure and pay for the restoration costs, too.
@Replit - If Replit were a restaurant, and the server bringing you your food would accompany that food with “Our water supply is disrupted today, so we cooked everyting without water. (Serves burnt dish.) Here’s the check.” Would you pay that? You can’t eat it, so now you have to order again. “Fine”, says the waiter, “but I will then also charge you for the costs of cleaning the burnt food out of the pans.” Would you pay for that, too?
I am more than happy to pay for what you provide.
I not happy to pay for what you do not provide, and certainly I do not want to pay for the repair of damages Replit inflicts on my code base whilst charging me for not providing what I payed for in the first place.
The solution is a very simple two-step process:
1 - When the AI service fails and the “AI services are temporarily unavailable. Please try again in a few moments.” message is triggered, do not charge the user for that run.
2 - When the AI service fails and the “AI services are temporarily unavailable. Please try again in a few moments.” message is triggered, Offer the user a clear option to roll back to the restore point directly before the last prompt made changes.
This way, the user:
- Does not have to pay for half, possibly destructive work;
- May elect to continue working a restart the prompt, and in so doing accept any extra costs that may incur.
This leads to an optimal User Experience: [A] There is no charge for services not rendered and [B] the option to accept costs for fixing half completed work in an effort to save time.
By letting the user choose between these options, the user regains some control which leads to happier users.
I would love to hear everyone’s take on this.