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What happens when your Sparks run out
Keenoble refuses before it spends, names which limit you hit, and serves one metered grace call an hour — the one path allowed to take your balance briefly below zero. All of it, stated plainly.
Applies to
- Nothing. This is worth reading before you hit the limit rather than after.
What happens
A send that would cost more than you have is refused before any model is called. Nothing is spent on a request that was never going to be answered — the balance check runs ahead of classification, not after it.
The refusal text is fixed rather than generated: “You're out of sparks right now. Top up on the Upgrade page, or wait for your next free allowance — I'd rather say so than pretend I answered.” Being out of Sparks must not itself cost a Spark to be told about.
On the free plan the panel is headed “You're out of credits”. It states what the message needed against what you have, that “Credits reset every 8 hours at 00:00, 08:00, and 16:00 CET.”, and how long until the next reset.
On Premium there are two different messages and the difference matters. “Today's pace limit reached” means today's ceiling is spent and the month is intact — it names how many Sparks are still there tomorrow, and when full pace resumes.
“This month's Sparks are spent” is the other one: the whole period's allowance is gone, and only a top-up moves before renewal. Both panels carry the top-up options with the property that matters printed on them — no daily limit.
Below zero is possible, in exactly one place. If you are signed in and your balance cannot cover even the cheapest answer in the roster, Keenoble serves one call per UTC hour anyway, on the cheapest lane. It is charged 0.035 Sparks — it is not free — and it is the only path on the platform permitted to take a balance negative.
That debt is capped at 0.5 Sparks. At the cap the grace call stops being granted and you are refused until you top up. The debt is settled first out of your next top-up, before any of it becomes spendable balance.
As a guest you get a sign-up prompt rather than a top-up prompt. A free account carries its own allowance, and the conversation you were in is kept rather than discarded.
Why this is published rather than softened
The grace call is not a free bonus and we are not going to describe it as one. It is metered, it is capped, and it can leave you owing a fraction of a Spark. A user who meets that in their balance months from now should have been able to read it here first.
It is also the only place on any Keen Labs surface where a balance is allowed below zero. That makes it exactly the kind of mechanic a company is tempted not to write down, which is the reason it is written down.
What has been checked here, and what has not
Every claim above resolves to one of the files listed under it, read on 2026-08-18. That is the evidence this page stands on, and it is what a source check can establish: what the code does.
What it cannot establish is the wording on your screen at the moment you hit the limit — that is a live-product question, and a reviewer checks it in the verification pass along with the rest of the guides. If a panel says something other than what is quoted here, the quote is the bug.
Checked against
Every claim above was read out of these files in the Keenoble source on 2026-08-18. They are named so the page can be checked rather than taken on trust.
- src/app/api/claw/route.ts — the pre-flight refusal gate, and the fixed refusal text
- src/app/api/credits/route.ts — the free allowance and its three reset windows
- src/lib/ai/spark-cap.ts — the Premium monthly allowance and its daily pace
- src/lib/ai/pricing-policy.ts — HOURLY_GRACE_CHARGE and HOURLY_GRACE_DEBT_FLOOR
- src/lib/ai/hourly-fallback.ts — the hourly claim, the charge, and the settlement out of a top-up
- src/app/page.tsx — the headings and copy of the exhausted panel
Next
Having problems with the platform? Contact us at support@keenlabs.pro. If a step here does not match what Keenoble does, the step is the bug — send it to the same address. All the guides are at /guides; shorter answers are on the FAQ.