Why Autopilot turns itself off - and when turning off IS a fault

You switched Autopilot on, and a moment later the row was back to Turn on. One performer wrote in with exactly this: "Under Automations I turned Autopilot On. Is this supposed to stay on? It keeps turning off." Nearly every time, nothing is broken and the run did what it was meant to do. But there is one version of this that genuinely is a fault, and the two look identical if you only glance at the switch. This article gives you both, and the one-minute check that tells them apart.

The short answer: that switch is a status light, not a setting

Autopilot is not a mode you leave engaged. It is Otto going and doing a full pass of your booking work, then handing it back to you when the pass is done. Think of it as "go do a shift now", not "leave the engine running forever". Turning it on opens the task chooser first, so nothing ever runs that you did not pick.

The Autopilot row in the left sidebar, under the Automations heading, mirrors whether a run is happening right this second. It is not storing a preference. When the run ends, for any reason at all, the row returns to Turn on. So the plain answer to "does Autopilot stay on" is no, it does not, and Autopilot switches itself off at the end of every run by design. Seeing it off again is the expected result, not a failed save.

Which means the useful question is never "why did it turn off". It is "how long did it run before it turned off, and what did it do in that time".

The four normal reasons it flips back to off

Support sees all four of these regularly, and every one of them is the system behaving correctly. Open Activity: the status line at the top, plus the steps listed under it, tell you which of the four you got.

1. Otto finished the pass. The status line says the job reported it finished. There is nothing to restart. This is the common case.
2. Otto stopped safely because he needs a decision from you. When he hits something that is genuinely yours to call, a send, a quote, a price, he parks it rather than guessing. It appears as a Needs you card in Activity and on the Tasks tab under Needs your decision, described there as stopped safely until you choose. Nothing proceeds until you do. The switch being off here means "waiting on you", not "gave up".
3. He ran low on your Claude usage for this window. Booked Solid runs on your own Claude plan, and that plan's usage pool refills on a schedule. When a run reaches the edge of it, Activity says "paused at your Claude plan's usage limit - run it again after the limit resets and it picks up from its log", and a Keep going button appears next to that line. Nothing is lost. There is a full article on this called Your Claude usage limit: why it runs out, what uses it, and how to make it last, and it is worth reading if this is the one you keep landing on.
4. He reached the built-in time limit for a single run. One unattended burst has a wall-clock ceiling, 45 minutes in the current build, so a job that gets stuck in a loop cannot quietly drain your whole Claude window overnight. A capped run is not a lost run: Otto keeps an append-only log as he works, so starting Autopilot again resumes from where the log ends instead of redoing the work. This is the one case the status line cannot name for you. It ends on the general wording "stopped before it could confirm it finished", so the length of the run and the steps in Activity are what tell you it was the ceiling.

If any of those four is what you are seeing, the fix is usually to answer the parked decision or run it again. Nothing needs reporting.

When it IS actually a fault: off within seconds

Here is the diagnostic that separates normal from broken. Watch the clock.

• Minutes, with steps appearing in Activity, then off. Normal. That is one of the four reasons above.
• Seconds, with nothing appearing in Activity at all. A fault. Otto never got started.

If it turns off after a few seconds and the Activity panel stays empty, Otto could not start his engine. There are two known causes, and both are about the Claude account behind the app rather than about Autopilot itself:

• The sign-in to your paid Claude plan did not complete. In a current build the status line says the job stopped because Claude is signed out, and the answer is to sign in and run it again. If your app is older it may only say it stopped before it could confirm it finished. That general line is also what a current build falls back on whenever it cannot name the reason, so on its own it proves nothing either way. Updating from booked.kivimedia.co/download gets you the clearer message wherever there is one.
• Your Claude usage for the moment is already spent. If the window was exhausted before you pressed anything, the run has nowhere to go and ends immediately. It comes back on its own when the window resets.

One more case worth naming, because it looks the same from the outside: if you are on the Pearl tier, Autopilot will not engage at all. Turning it on shows an upsell window with Upgrade to Autopilot and Not now instead of starting a run. On the original edition Autopilot also requires EPIN membership, and if you have not joined, the EPIN gate appears first. The DJ & AV edition skips that step. You can join from inside that window and the flow continues straight into the task chooser. So if your read on this is that Autopilot won't stay on and it has never once produced a run, check the tier and EPIN before anything else.

What to send us if it is the seconds case

Telling us "I turned it on and it went off again" on its own does not give us enough to act on, and it costs you a round trip while we ask. Two facts settle it immediately:

1. Roughly how long it runs before flipping off. Two seconds and forty seconds are different problems. An estimate is fine.
2. What shows up in the Activity panel while it runs. Nothing at all, one line, a status message, an error. Copy the exact wording of the status line if there is one, or say plainly that the panel stayed empty.

Send those two things in the first message and we can usually tell you the cause in one reply.

Nothing wakes up on its own unless you allow it

Booked Solid is deliberately careful about unattended work, and that is part of why the switch behaves this way. Plays that can start themselves default to off and are opt-in one at a time, from Settings > General under Plays that may start themselves. A Play appearing in the catalog is not consent for it to run on its own.

If what you want is standing work, use Scheduled tasks

If the reason you wanted Autopilot to stay engaged is that you want Otto doing something on a regular rhythm, that is a different feature and it does keep coming back. In the same Automations group in the left sidebar there is a row called Scheduled tasks with a Manage button, which takes you to Settings > General, to the section headed Runs on its own and described in the app as "Things I do for you at a set time while the app is open". Pick a preset and a time of day, press Add, and it runs itself daily. That is much closer to what "stays on" usually means to people.

Those three names all refer to the same area of the product, which is why this article uses them together: Automations is the sidebar group, Runs on its own is the section inside Settings, Scheduled tasks is the sidebar row that takes you there, and the Set up the Autopilot schedule recipe on the Plays tab is one way in. Scheduling belongs to the Otto tier; on Pearl that recipe shows Upgrade to schedule.

The one real constraint: scheduled tasks run only while the app is open. If your computer was asleep at the scheduled time, the missed runs fire after it wakes, so nothing silently skips, but a closed app means no run.

If it still does not add up

If it runs for minutes, Activity shows real steps, and the ending still makes no sense to you, or it dies in seconds and you are already signed in to a paid Claude plan with usage left, that is worth a ticket. Email bookedsolid@kivimedia.freshdesk.com with how long it ran and what the Activity panel showed, and a person will pick it up from there.