Stale readings¶
A reading that was fine when it was taken but is now too old is stale.
The dashboard shows it dimmed, marks it STALE on the card, and never
presents it as a live number.
Why it happened¶
| Cause | How to tell | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| The service was unreachable for a while | The Status tab names the last problem | Fix the service, or check its base_url |
| The daemon was stopped | No collection, no new reading | Start the daemon |
| The collector stopped | No report <age> - run claude |
Run Claude Code in a terminal |
| The usage cache is simply old | Quota <age> old - open /usage |
Open /usage in Claude Code |
| The window's reset has passed | The window shows -- |
Use the service again |
| The provider stopped reporting a field | The window says unavailable | Nothing you can do; it is the provider's shape |
| A reader cannot read its file | The hint names the reason | See No Claude data |
What "too old" means¶
The threshold depends on the route:
| Route | Threshold |
|---|---|
| A normal quota source | Three times the refresh interval, or three minutes, whichever is longer |
| The Claude terminal export | Mark idle readings stale after (seconds), 900 by default |
| The Claude usage cache | Mark usage cache readings stale after (seconds), 7200 by default |
Each window of a merged report is judged by the route it came from, so a fresh cache reading next to an old export reading is not dragged down by the export's threshold.
Both Claude thresholds are in the account's Edit form, on the admin page.
The difference between stale and expired¶
An expired window has passed its reset time. Its last value is no longer
true, so Home shows -- with an empty bar, and the detail card keeps the
previous value and says what it was. It is never 0% and never a dimmed
number on Home.
A stale reading never alerts¶
Only a fresh, available window can raise an alert. A stale window, an unavailable window, a window whose reset has passed, and a window that resets within the next 30 minutes all keep their presentation and raise nothing.
Where to look first¶
The admin page's Status tab:
- Accounts - one row per account, with the last collection time, the status and the last problem in plain words.
- Readers and collectors - whether the local activity reader is scanning, when the usage cache was fetched, and when each remote collector last reported.
- Problems - the recent warnings and errors, de-duplicated.