"AI is paused": what still works, and how to type and send your own email with no AI budget left

KM Hub is telling you AI is paused, and the question you actually need answered is probably not "why" - it is "can I still email my clients?" You can. Nothing is broken and nothing is locked. One of your own spending guardrails did its job, and what it switched off is the AI's help, not your ability to work. Every pause traces back to a switch or a limit on the Usage tab in Settings, and turning AI back on takes under a minute once you know which guardrail fired - but you do not have to turn anything back on to keep emailing your clients today.

What still works while AI is paused

Here is the rule, and it is worth reading twice: when your AI budget runs low or runs out, what pauses is the AI work itself - the optional "write it for me" help in the composer, and the other AI-powered features alongside it. Typing and sending your own emails is not AI work, so it is always available, and a message you write yourself does not use the AI budget at all.

Plenty of people reach the opposite conclusion, and one customer wrote it up as a feature request: Can you add a feature where when I run out of money in the budget that I can personally type out an email when needed. Where it does not go through an AI if desired. There is nothing to add. That is already how KM Hub works, it is the default, and it costs nothing.

So the two questions people ask in the same breath: can I type my own email, and can I send an email without AI having any part in it? Yes to both. A manually written message is not measured against your allowance and is not billed, because no AI was involved in it. The pause is scoped to AI work only - anything in KM Hub that does not call the AI carries on exactly as it did before.

You do not need to top up your wallet, raise your spend cap, or turn on Allow extra usage in order to email a client. None of that is required for a message you write yourself. If your reason for being on this page is that you would rather not spend anything else this month, you can leave every setting exactly where it is.

How to type and send your own email with no AI budget left

1. Open Clients > Mail in the left sidebar, or go straight to hub.kivimedia.co/?page=mail.
2. Click Compose in the top right of the Mail page.
3. Fill in To and a Subject, then write the message in the body in your own words.
4. Attach anything the client needs with the paperclip icon - a contract, a song list, an invoice.
5. Click Send. The message lands in your Sent folder like any other.

That is the whole thing. The Mail compose window has no AI button in it at all. In the composers that do offer AI help, the button reads Write this email with AI on an empty message, or Improve / rewrite with AI once you have typed something. Ignore it. It is an optional button and never a required step, and skipping it means no AI touches the message and nothing is billed for it. The phrase customers use is I will just type it myself, and that is exactly right.

The one thing that does stop sending: a lapsed plan

There is one situation that pauses sending entirely, and it is a different problem with a different fix. If your plan itself lapses - a trial that ended without an upgrade, or a subscription that is no longer active - the whole account goes into view-only until the plan is sorted. In that state creating and sending are paused across the app, and the Subscription tab shows Trial ended - read-only. Your data is safe and nothing is deleted.

Hold the two apart in your head: an empty AI budget pauses the AI's help, and a lapsed plan pauses the account. The first is an AI-usage matter, and the fixes for it are further down this page. The second is a billing matter, and none of the fixes on this page will touch it - see "How billing works: your $1 trial, monthly plan, and day-14 charge" in this folder instead.

Why AI pauses

1. Your monthly credit ran out and extra usage is off

Every plan includes a monthly AI credit. The Allow extra usage switch decides what happens when that credit is used up: with the switch off, AI pauses until the next month begins; with it on, work continues and the extra usage is billed as used. Off is the cautious default behavior - it guarantees you are never billed beyond your plan.

2. You hit your monthly spend cap

If you have set a Monthly AI spend limit, AI pauses the moment your billable spend for the month - pay-as-you-go fuel plus overage - reaches that number. The billable-spend progress bar under the limit field shows how close you were.

3. Your wallet ran dry with auto top-up off

Pay-as-you-go work is funded by your prepaid wallet. With Auto top-up on, the wallet refills itself automatically so AI never stops for this reason. With it off, wallet-funded work can stop when the balance runs out.

How to turn AI back on

1. Click Settings (the gear at the bottom of the left rail) and open the Usage tab, under Billing & Money in the sidebar.
2. Check the Included allowance this month bar near the top: red means AI is currently blocked.
3. Pick the fix that matches your situation:
   • Turn Allow extra usage on to keep working past your included credit. Work continues and the extra is billed as used.
   • Raise or clear your Monthly AI spend limit (blank means no limit), then click Save limit.
   • Turn Auto top-up on so the wallet recharges itself automatically when it runs low.
4. Prefer to spend nothing more this month? Leave everything as is. AI resumes automatically when the new month starts and your included credit resets, and in the meantime you can still type and send your own emails.

See it coming next time

You get advance notice before any pause: the allowance bar switches to a warning color at 80% of your included credit, well before anything stops. When you see the warning color, take a moment on the Usage tab to decide ahead of time - allow extra usage, adjust your cap, or plan to let AI rest until the month resets. The This month, by feature table on the same page shows exactly which features used the credit, which makes it easy to spot what to dial back if you would rather stay inside the allowance.

If a hand-typed email still will not send

As long as your plan is active, an email you wrote yourself always goes out. If one refuses to send while your plan is active, that is a bug and not a budget problem, so do not spend anything trying to clear it - topping up the wallet will not fix a bug. Tell us who the message was going to, roughly when you tried, and what you saw on screen after clicking Send, and support will look at the account.

Still stuck? Submit a ticket from this help center and we'll take it from there.