# FAQ

Quick answers to the problems new Zo builders actually hit. This is a living document: it grows from real threads in #help-and-support. When a question gets solved there more than once, the answer gets distilled and added here, so ask freely; your stuck moment is the next entry.

Format: symptom first, then the fix, then the why if it teaches something.

---

## My automation fired at the wrong time (or seems to fire randomly)

**Almost always a timezone mismatch.** The hour in your schedule is being interpreted in a different timezone than the one in your head, commonly a local-vs-UTC mix-up. A 7am schedule landing at noon or at 2am is the signature.

**Fix:**
1. Open the automation and check its next scheduled fire time against your wall clock.
2. Recreate or edit the schedule stating the timezone in words: "7am US Eastern, my local time."
3. Verify empirically: set a test run a few minutes out, watch it fire, then restore the real schedule.

Also remember daylight saving: a UTC-pinned schedule drifts an hour against your mornings twice a year. Deeper dive: the Automations That Fire guide.

---

## My site or service is showing old content after I changed the code

**You changed the source, but the running process is still serving the old build.** Many setups serve a prebuilt bundle: editing source does nothing until you rebuild, and a running service keeps its old code until you restart it. Stale UI after a confident edit is the signature.

**Fix:** rebuild, then restart the service, in that order. Then hard-refresh the browser (cached frontend assets produce the same symptom one layer up).

**Two rules that prevent the painful versions of this:**
- Learn the exact build-and-restart command for each thing you run, and write it down in the project's notes so it is never half-done.
- Never kill a managed process directly to "restart" it. The supervisor respawns it immediately and you can end up with two processes fighting over one port, which looks like a haunted server. Always restart through the proper service controls.

---

## Zo says it can't access a file, an app, or an integration

**Three different causes that look identical. Check them in order:**

1. **The integration was never connected.** Connecting your accounts (email, calendar, drive, and so on) is an explicit step in settings. If you have not connected it, the AI cannot reach it, no matter how it is asked.
2. **You are talking to a scoped persona.** Personas can be deliberately restricted: a persona without file access or integration access will refuse no matter what is connected at the account level. (Friday, this community's bot, is exactly this: web-only by design.) Check which persona you are in; switch to your main assistant for full-access work.
3. **The thing does not exist where you said it is.** Wrong path, renamed file, different folder. Ask the AI to list what it actually sees in the location and reconcile from there, rather than repeating the request.

The why: capability on Zo is layered on purpose: account-level connections, then per-persona scope. Restriction is a feature; the skill is knowing which layer is saying no.

---

## My credits are draining faster than expected

**Look for a multiplier, not a big single expense.** In order of likelihood:

1. **An aggressive schedule.** An agent running hourly is ~720 runs a month; every five minutes is ~8,600. List your automations and check frequencies, including experiments you forgot to turn off.
2. **Polling.** Any automation that "checks whether something happened" pays full price for mostly-empty runs. Slow it to the cadence you actually act on, or restructure so events push to you instead.
3. **A heavyweight model on routine recurring work.** Summaries, reformatting, and routine checks do not need the top model. Set the model deliberately on anything that runs on a schedule.
4. **A retry or agent loop.** Something failing and re-trying repeatedly, or agents spawning agents. Check logs for the same action repeating.

The habit that prevents the surprise entirely: a two-minute glance at your usage page weekly, plus a napkin estimate (runs per month times cost per run) before shipping anything recurring. Deeper dive: the Cost and Usage guide.

---

## Zo forgot what we set up. How do I make it remember across conversations?

**Working as designed: conversations are not the memory. Files are.** A new conversation starts fresh; anything that lives only in an old chat is effectively gone. The fix is a habit, not a setting:

1. Keep a notes file per project (one page: what this is, decisions made, current state, gotchas).
2. End substantial work sessions with: "update the project notes with what we decided and where we left off."
3. Start new sessions with: "read [project]/notes.md, then let's continue."

This is the single highest-leverage habit on the platform. Done consistently, every conversation starts oriented instead of from zero, and your setup gets **more** reliable over time instead of less. Skills and personas are the same idea formalized: durable instructions that survive any individual chat. Deeper dive: The Classified Method.

---

*Solved something in #help-and-support that belongs here? Flag it and it gets added.*